Billy Coffey

storyteller

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For when you’re weary

May 25, 2015 by Billy Coffey 7 Comments

old-historic-photos-421__605

I’m not sure how long I’ve carried this picture, tucked inside the little notebook I keep in my back pocket. I no longer remember where I first stumbled upon it, or how, or the number of copies I’ve worn out by unfolding it and folding it again whenever I need the reminder. It’s served me well over the years. Kept me going. When you have a dream that sometimes feels close enough to embrace as fact and other times feels so far that it seems the two of you will always be destined as strangers, keeping on becomes the hardest thing and the most important. Victor Hugo once said that each man should frame life so that at some future hour fact and his dreaming meet. I would imagine that sentiment applies to women equally. The picture at the top of this post is a reminder of my own future hour. It makes me see that I’m not alone in what dreams I have. There are others out there—you, perhaps—whose aim in life reaches high. There always have been.

The picture was taken in 1961, at a place called the Aldershot Club. Where the club was (or remains), I cannot tell you. I suppose it’s enough to say it wasn’t a very popular place with the day’s younger folk, or perhaps it was the club’s entertainment that night wasn’t enough to draw a larger crowd. According to the note I scrawled on the back, a total of eighteen people spent that night dancing. I would imagine few of those cared to admit they were in attendance after the fact. It does seem to me, though, that they’re all enjoying themselves. I’ve often though that despite it all, that’s the most important thing.

Look close enough, you can make out three-and-a-half of the four faces on the stage—singer, guitarist and bass player, and part of the drummer. I doubt the photographer intended to make such a strong point in leaving the band to the shadows, but the result is poetic in a way and not at all ironic. Those four were surely in the shadows, lost among a sea of other bands with aspirations just as lofty. They are too far away for me to gauge their expressions. I like to imagine them fully involved in their music, feeling each note as it courses through with a precision that indicates not only inherent talent, but unending practice.

That’s how we all start out, don’t we? Doesn’t matter if your goal is to be a musician or a writer or a professional _______, this picture represents the beginning. Obscurity and under-appreciation. Playing to a crowd that barely reaches double digits or writing novels or short stories or blog posts read by about the same number of people. We toil under the assumption—the hope—that it won’t always be this way, that the hour Victor Hugo expressed when fact meets dream will surely come. We do this even as the inner critic, that realist to counter an almost holy optimism, shouts that you and I are only two of many, that our dreams are no less than the dreams of billions more, and how is it that we are so special to warrant fulfillment? Ours is a hard world, after all. Often enough, the goal becomes not to rise above but merely not to sink. Forget about overcoming, sometimes all we can hope for is to simply get by.

Worse, if we are strong enough to dream we must also be courageous enough to admit that dream rarely, if ever, truly arrives. A part of us already knows that no matter how tall the mountain we climb, at its peak will lie another, taller one in the distance. That is the cost demanded of those led beyond the doors of a boring life, an existence frittered away with passionless work, the only light a coming weekend or those seven summer days of vacation. There is an allure to the life of the masses that the life of a dreamer cannot match: that sense of being settled—that, good or bad, this is how you will spend your remaining days. It is a rut, no doubt, but at least one that is straight and relatively smooth and travels over no mountains.

I wonder, looking at this picture, if the four men on the stage are thinking about a life in one of those ruts. The men and women on the dance floor look happy enough. They are all perhaps married, all gainfully employed in jobs that offer steady pay to balance out mortgages and bills. A better life, perhaps, than that of an artist, living gig to gig and wondering if it will always be that way. Or maybe it is that those four men understand what many of us do—a life of settling hurts no less than a life of dreaming. Its pain is merely spread out, constant enough to dull us to it but there. We would hurt if we gave up just as we would if we keep going, because the world is made for bruising. That’s why I think in the end it doesn’t matter who chooses the ruts and who challenges the mountains. We are all extraordinary just by making it to the end of our lives. We all deserve a measure of rest after.

Maybe that’s what Paul is thinking. And John. And George and Ringo. Maybe they’re thinking that some people settle and some never do, and you put them both together and what comes out is music. Regardless, they kept on. And a year and a half later, the world would know the Beatles.

Maybe—just maybe—that’s you up on that stage. Standing away from and above the smattering of some crowd, vowing to play as if it were millions. If so, I say let’s keep on. Let’s play and sing and not grow weary. For there’s a mountain to climb, friend, and another on ahead.

Filed Under: career, challenge, endurance, writing

The value of our art

March 31, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

image courtesy of google images. Spangled Blengins, Boy King Islands. One is a young Tuskorhorian, the other a human headed Dortherean by Henry Darger
image courtesy of google images. Spangled Blengins, Boy King Islands. One is a young Tuskorhorian, the other a human headed Dortherean by Henry Darger

Let me tell you about Henry Darger, the man who wrote one of the most detailed and bizarre books in history.

Never heard of him? Me neither. At least, not until I happened to stumble upon his story a few weeks ago. Seems strange that someone who did something so grand could be so unknown, doesn’t it? But it’s true. In fact, you could even say that’s why Henry was so extraordinary.

image courtesy of google images
image courtesy of google images

He was a janitor. Nothing so special about that, but nothing so wrong with it, either. There is no correlation between who a person is and what that person does for a living. Einstein was a patent clerk. Faulkner a mailman. Henry Darger mopped floors.

An unassuming man. A quiet man. He never married, never really had friends. Just a regular guy living a regular life, one of the faceless masses that occupy so much of the world who are here for a short while and then gone forever.

Henry left in 1973.

There are no accounts of his funeral. I don’t know if anyone attended at all, though I like to think they did. I like to think there was a crowd huddled around his casket that day to bid him farewell.

It is an unfortunate fact of life that so many people are discovered to have been truly extraordinary only after their passing. Such was the case with Henry. A few days after his passing, his landlord went through his apartment to ready it for rent. What he found was astonishing.

What he found hidden among Henry’s possessions was a manuscript. Its title may give you a clue as to the story’s scope and magnitude:

THE STORY OF THE VIVIAN GIRLS, IN WHAT IS KNOWN AS THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL, OF THE GLANDECO-ANGELINIAN WAR STORM, CAUSED BY THE CHILD SLAVE REBELLION

Did you get that? If not, I can’t blame you. I had to read the title three times to even understand a little of it, and that doesn’t count the time I actually wrote it out.

The breadth and scope of Henry’s book went well beyond epic. The manuscript itself contained 15,000 pages. Over nine million words. Over 300 watercolor pictures coinciding with the story. Some of the illustrations were so large they measured ten feet wide.

A lifetime’s worth of work. Years upon years of solitary effort, hundreds of thousands of hours spent writing and painting, creating an entire saga of another world.

And all for no apparent reason. Not only did Henry Darger never seek any sort of publication for his work, he never told a soul about it. His book was his dream and his secret alone.

I’ve thought about Henry Darger a lot since I first read about him. Which, as change or fate would have it, just to happened to be the very week my newest novel released. A tough thing, that. You’d think it wouldn’t be, perhaps, but it is. No matter who an author is or how successful he or she may be or how many books or under his or her belt, the most important thing to us all is that our words matter. Matter to others, matter to the world. We want what we say and think and feel to count for something.

But Henry Darger reminds me that none of those things mean anything. In the end, we cannot account for how the world will judge our work, and so, in the end, the world’s opinion really doesn’t matter. Simple as that.

What matters—what counts—is that our words stir not the world, but ourselves. That they conjure in our own hearts and minds a kind of magic that neither the years nor the work can dull. The kind of magic that sustains us in our lonely times and gives our own private worlds meaning. The kind of magic that tinges even the life of a simple janitor with greatness.

Filed Under: beauty, career, choice, dreams, failure, journey, life

Creating magic

March 26, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

I’ll say I’m a writer because I can’t speak. At least not well and not in front of large groups of people I do not know. I’ve done so anyway, and many times. And truthfully, I do just fine as long as I don’t count the “aint’s” and dropped g’s that come out of my mouth.

The invitation to speak that I received recently wasn’t one I could pass up. It wasn’t a fancy conference, wasn’t in a fancy city. It didn’t pay well (actually, it didn’t pay at all). It was instead for career day at the local elementary school.

It isn’t often that I get to play author, much less play one for an entire day. Despite the props I brought along—five books, a typed manuscript, and one bulging notebook—I knew it would be a rough road to travel. After all, I was going up against firemen and police officers and radio personalities. A writer would have a tough time competing with that with a bunch of grownups, much less a hundred fourth graders.

But as it turned out I didn’t have much to worry about at all. Sure, they were fourth graders—that peculiar brand of kid to which both reading and writing are anathema. So I started with the fact that when I was their age, I hated reading and writing, too.

It was all downhill from there.

I’m smart enough to know that kids aren’t much interested in publishers or first drafts or the horror that is the adverb, smart enough to know that adults aren’t much interested in them either. But I’ve found over the years that everyone, regardless of age or interest, perks up whenever I mention a writer’s primary gift to the world.

Not wisdom. Not inspiration. Not tight plots or moving themes or even memorable characters. No, writers do what they do because of one reason and one reason only—

They get to create magic.

They didn’t believe me, of course. Not right away. One kid asked me to make his pencil disappear if I knew magic. Another wanted me to guess the number she was thinking. I told them I couldn’t and that it didn’t matter, because the magic writers do was better. It was the greatest magic of all.

It was the magic of writing words down on a page that make pictures in other people’s minds.

It was the magic of being able to create entire worlds from scratch and put anything I wanted to in them.

It was the magic of being able to touch another person’s heart, a person who might live far away, someone you’ve never spoken to and likely will never meet.

And best of all, I told them, is that everyone possesses a bit of that magic. Anyone could be a writer. Didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, didn’t matter what color you were, didn’t even matter if you went to college or not. That magic was still in us.

It takes time, of course. All magic does. But I told them that if they did three simple things, that magic would grow and eventually spill out.

You have to read, I said. Every day.

And you have to write. Every day.

And most important of all, you have to believe you’re special. Because there is only one you in this world, and the way you see life is different than the way anyone else who’s ever lived has seen it. That’s why your story is so important. So needed. After all, that’s what the magic is for.

Turns out that an informal poll conducted by the teachers placed me second of the day’s top speakers. The winner was the radio guy. I wasn’t surprised. I can’t compete with someone who’s met Taylor Swift and Trace Adkins. I wouldn’t even try.

But a teacher told me that the next day when it came time for her class to do their journal writing, there was much less grumbling than usual. They were ready. Eager. When she asked why, her kids told her they wanted to make some magic.

Me, too.

Filed Under: career, education, magic, writing

Making beautiful people

January 29, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

image courtesy of photobucket.com

Part of my end-of-the-year routine means going through the notebooks I’ve accumulated over the past twelve months. I pour over scribbles and jottings, making sure I’ve left nothing of value behind. Often, I find I haven’t. But just now I’ve come across something I’d completely forgotten. Written diagonally across the top of a page were six words, each letter capitalized to express their importance:

CAREER DAY—I MAKE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

It was back last spring. Career Day at the local elementary school, and an acquaintance called to ask if I could come and talk about writing books. I told her writing books was not my full time profession yet. She told me when you’re dealing with a classroom of ten-year-olds, such petty distinctions don’t matter.

I went, though admittedly in a selfish kind of way. I didn’t care so much to talk about what I did nearly as much as I wanted to hear about what everyone else did. I wasn’t disappointed. That day I met firemen and police officers and truck drivers, a lady who worked on airplanes and a guy who made dentures. It was fascinating, all of it, and all of it taught me something, too—when pressed, we can all make what we do sound like the coolest thing in the world.

But it was the plastic surgeon that I remember most. Not so much for his appearance (which, fittingly enough, looked as plastic as his creations) or his demeanor (many of us consciously skipped over the tedious parts of our jobs, but I got the feeling the good doctor sincerely thought his didn’t have any). No, it was what he said that struck me then. It’s what strikes me still.

“I make beautiful people. Beautiful people don’t just happen.”

There was a short time for questions when he finished. Only one student raised a hand, a boy in the back corner who wanted to know how much it would cost for the doctor to turn him into Iron Man. The doctor laughed and did not answer. I thought it was the best question of the day.

I wanted to raise my hand and almost did. Got it as far as my shoulder before I put it back into my pocket. It was question time, not argument time. What I was thinking wasn’t a question.

Because that doctor didn’t say, “I make people beautiful.” If he had, maybe I would’ve let the whole thing go. Maybe I would’ve never made that little scribble in my notebook, and maybe I wouldn’t be writing this post. Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder. But he didn’t. He said, “I make beautiful people,” and that tiny change, that minuscule switching of those last two words, made all the difference.

Making people beautiful and making beautiful people are in no way the same. One is outward; shallow. It reaches no deeper than the last layer of skin. But the other? It permeates. It covers every cell. To me, the latter is much more valuable.

And the great secret is this: It’s often the beautiful people who don’t look so beautiful at all. They have wrinkles and graying hair from worrying over their kids. They have a swollen belly from too many meals with family and friends. Their eyes are droopy and their hands are rough and calloused from work. They don’t have time to make themselves look pretty. They know the value of a person lies more in the size of their heart than the size of their breasts. It the amount of compassion that matters, not the amount of hair.

That doctor was right about one thing, though. Beautiful people don’t just happen. It takes a lifetime of walking through this world, of enduring. It’s falling down and getting up and falling down again. It’s the courage to try and love and hope when you’re surrounded by failure and hate and doubt. It means getting scars that may fade but will never go away.

Give me that beauty. Because what the good doctor promises is a pretty that will end in the grave. But that other beauty, the real beauty? It will follow us from this world to the next.

Filed Under: beauty, career

Designed to Work: Are We Meant for Toil?

November 4, 2014 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

photo by Sandra Heska King (used with permission)
photo by Sandra Heska King (used with permission)

Sitting in a corner office or plowing the back forty:

What comes to mind when you consider a hard day’s work?

I’m pondering that over at The High Calling today. I hope to see you there.

Filed Under: career, High Calling, work

Future Kevin

October 3, 2014 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

He sits by himself at a small table in the back of the lunchroom. Chin in his hand, eyes, down. His fingers flick at discarded bits of the day’s pepperoni pizza that were missed by the lunch lady’s dishrag. The afternoon sun filters through tiny handprints on the windows, making the grass stains on his too-short jeans glow a deep emerald.

He sees me as I walk in—there’s something about a door opening that makes even the meekest of us look up in reflex—and turns aside. Today is Friday, and I told him I would need an answer by the end of the week. But his back is turned away and his body is folded in upon himself to make him as small as possible, and I think no. No, he still doesn’t know.

Waiting for my kids in the school cafeteria gives me a sense of connectedness to a part of their lives I mostly miss. I get to see where they eat, how they interact with others, what kinds of people surround them. And I get to see other kids, too.

Kids like Kevin. The one alone at the small table in the back.

He’s there every day, waiting for someone to pick him up and trying to stay hidden until they do. I said hello to him Monday afternoon. I was a bit early that day, and there was no one else to talk to. I was counting on a one-sided conversation. Kids like Kevin—and there seems to be many of them today, yes?—desire nothing but the next moment, to continue on, regardless of the unnamable weight they bear. I didn’t know what Kevin’s was (and I still don’t), but I knew it was there. I could feel it.

So I said hello. Sat down beside him at the small table and flicked a bit of food away—it was French fries that day—and waited for him to talk. It took prodding, but he did. General stuff. Nothing of home. Kids like Kevin, with their unnamable weights and downcast eyes, don’t talk much of home.

He’d been in trouble that day. Kevin showed me the white slip of paper his mama had to sign. Daydreaming, the note said. I told him I daydreamed a lot and that daydreaming was fun, but school was important.

“No it isn’t,” he said.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked him.

Shrug.

“Come on,” I said. “You have to want to do something.”

Shrug.

“When I was your age, I wanted to be an astronaut. Didn’t work out, but I still look at the stars a lot.”

Kevin said nothing.

“Tell you what, I’ll be back on Friday. You think about it and let me know then. Deal?”

He said he’d try. The kids came and we left. I waved to Kevin as we went out the door. He didn’t wave back.

And now, he’s ignoring me.

“Hey Kevin,” I say.

Shrug.

“Been doing any thinking about what I asked?”

His eyes said yes. I pulled a chair up to the table and sat. My mind tried to think of something little Kevin wanted to be. Maybe an astronaut, like I wanted once upon a time. Or President, though I figured there weren’t many kids nowadays who wanted to grow up to be that. Maybe a scientist.

“I guess I’m going to work at Little Caesar’s like my mom.”

Oh.

“That’s all you want to do?” I ask him. “I mean, that’s great if that’s all you want to do. But…that’s all you want to do?”

He lowers his head to find something to flick on the table. “That’s all I can do,” he says.

“I don’t believe that,” I tell him, and Kevin shrugs.

The kids are on their way. I say goodbye to Kevin and leave him at the table. I don’t know when someone will pick him up, don’t know when I’ll see him again. But I know I’ll worry about him. A boy like that, a boy that young, should see this world as one of possibility and magic. His sights should be set higher than where they are. He should believe in himself more.

But I wonder if we’ve reached that point where we no longer inspire our children to become more than ourselves. If we see them as mere carbon copies, destined to make our own mistakes and suffer through our own failures.

And if we’ve accepted the lie that says greatness in life is reserved for all but shy boys in too-small jeans who sit alone at the lunchroom table.

Filed Under: burdens, career, children, choice, doubt, dreams

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