Billy Coffey

storyteller

The value of our art

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.

My neighbor and hero

Screen Shot 2014-02-19 at 9.28.39 AM
image courtesy of google images.

Time has a way of wiping the memory, compacting chunks of years into months or even days in the mind, glossing over even those recollections we once held as precious. There is much I’ve misplaced about my childhood, but one thing stands out even now: those long days when I sat prostrate in front of the television, my knobby knees tucked under myself, back straight and eyes forward, waiting for Mr. Rogers to come on.

It was much the same with you, I would imagine. Generations of people grew up visiting Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood each day. We grew up with him. Learned with him. No matter who we are or what we’ve become, our childhoods have him in common.

Growing up, he was my hero. I wanted a sweater like his and a sandbox like his, and I pined for a magical train that would run through my house to distant lands. It was time that separated us, no longer made us neighbors. When a boy (or a girl, for that matter) reaches a certain age, Mr. Rogers is no longer cool. Mr. Rogers becomes a nerd. A dork. He’s no longer a friend, he’s the weird old man down the street.

How stupid we all are.

In 1997, after 33 years of teaching us all how to look and listen and act, Fred Rogers was given a lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys. It was quite an odd sight, seeing him and his wife among some of the most famous and powerful people in Hollywood. And yet he took the stage to receive the award accompanied by a standing ovation that ended when he stood in front of the microphone. What happened next can only be described as magical. I ask you to take three minutes out of your day to watch:

Video from KarmaTube

How wonderful is that? How beautiful that this humble man (who was an ordained minister to boot) stood upon that glimmering stage in all that pomp and circumstance, holding a statue coveted by so many, and made it all not about him. And more than that, he reminded everyone else that it wasn’t all about them, either. It was instead about the ones who had been there to support them, to love them, to help them. In an age defined by the individual, Fred Rogers taught us in ten seconds that we are all connected to one another.

But there’s more. What struck me most watching that speech was that such a powerful truth had been given with such meekness and humility. How hard do you think it would be to convince a crowd of Hollywood actors and actresses to pause for a moment and think about someone other than themselves? To forget their fancy dress and their high status? And yet Mr. Rogers did just that, and merely by looking at his watch.

“I’ll watch the time.”

That’s all it took. There is a small rumble in the crowd, a few chuckles, and then utter silence. Because Mr. Rogers wasn’t kidding. He was serious, he wanted them to do this. And when Mr. Rogers asks that you do something, you do it. Not because you’re scared or intimidated, but because a part of you knows that he loves you.

Because he’s your neighbor.

As a result, Fred Rogers got exactly what he wanted that night. Not applause, not a statue. He convinced all of those people that they are indeed special, not because of what they’ve become, but because of who they loved and who loved them.

And that is why Mr. Rogers was my hero growing up. And now that I’m grown, why he’s my hero still.

The real one percent

occupy-eve-guy-fawkesShe’s gone now—back home, maybe, though with college graduates one cannot be too sure—so since I cannot obtain the necessary permissions, I’ll call her Kim. And I’ll say that Kim is a nice girl (because she really is), though one whose world is covered with that tinge of rose common to most her age. I’ve always found it strange that it’s the young who speak in absolutes and the old who tend to preface their declarations with words like “Maybe.”

Kim, she was always an absolute gal.

Into the whole college experience, too. By which I mean that studying often came after other, more important things. Like protests. Kim was a huge protestor. She told me once that she’d gotten that from her mother, who once burned her bras and marched with the blacks and staged sit-ins to bring the boys back from Vietnam.

Kim had a busy four years. There was the war to protest (both of them, Iraq and Afghanistan, plus she threw in Libya just in case). Darfur. Gay and lesbian rights. Kim went to town on the Trayvon Martin case. That whole thing really made her mad.

But for the past year or so, it’s been this whole Occupy thing. Kim doesn’t like rich people much, doesn’t care for the “privileged” or the “elite,” and I know this for a fact because she told me that, too. She said the banks were ruining this country, and we were all serfs and pawns and slaves to The Man, and she said all of these things while waving her arms wildly at me, and then I quit paying attention to her words because I saw that her armpits had more hair than my own. When a guy like me sees something like that on a girl, focusing on anything else becomes a major problem.

Always one to put actions to her words, Kim went on a humanitarian trip this spring. Three weeks, all of which was spent in Haiti, rebuilding schools and churches and helping to feed and clothe. I was really proud of her for doing that.

I saw Kim last week, three days after she’d gotten back. Our conversation was short (she had a final to take, I had mail to deliver) but informative. She said she had a wonderful time, but it had also been a hard one. Heartbreaking, really. She’d never seen so many people in so much want, never seen such squalor or such pain. And yet she said that the Haitian people are a happy people, quick to smile and slow to anger, and their hospitality was abundant.

She had so many stories to tell, but time enough to only tell me one:

They had spent all day rebuilding the home of a single mother and her five children. The father had lost his life in the earthquake, the mother could not find work, and so the family was forced to scavenge for food and water to sustain them. She had, though, managed to secure a chicken to fix them all supper. She gathered Kim and the people she was with around a barely-there wooden table fed them, then collected the scraps and chicken bones that were left behind.

These, she gave to her children.

Kim said she’d felt sick after, knowing that she’d been fed while her children hadn’t, sick enough that she thought she’d throw up. Her nausea only went away when she realized doing so would be even worse. It would mean that the family’s sacrifice would have gone to waste.

I don’t know what Kim thinks now. Maybe nothing—she’s a college graduate about to enter the real world, so I figure her plate’s pretty full. But I hope she understands now what I think a whole lot of people don’t. There’s a lot of talk about the 99 and the 1 percent in this country, about a yawning gap between the haves and have nots, the middle class getting stymied and the lower class being held down.

But ask Kim now, and I think she’d tell you the truth about all of that. She’s seen want. She’s been around hunger. She understands better what it means to be oppressed. And I bet she’d say that if you call this great land your own, then you have it better than almost anyone else in this world.

You are an American.

You are the 1 percent.

Fame, fortune and being remembered

talented-kidsAccording to the overly excited man I just heard on the radio, in a few weeks a talent agency will be holding auditions near our town for children aged five to fifteen. Dozens of fancy-dressed and smooth talking representatives from networks such as Nickelodeon and the Disney channel will be there. Talent scouts from movie studios. Modeling agencies. You name it! the voice said.

And then it said, “Imagine how it would be to have your child appear in movies like Breaking Dawn and television shows like Hanna Montana!”

Seeing as how I’m driving along an empty road lined by fat cows and empty corn fields, I figure I might as well go ahead and do what the voice said. It doesn’t take me long to imagine such a life for my kids. I get as far as my daughter being a twenty-year-old reality star who divorced after a few weeks of marriage just to improve ratings and my son appearing on some celebrity detox show. Then I pray. I pray for a very long time.

Of course I imagine not too many other people who heard that commercial paused to consider such things. Or maybe the did. But human nature being what it is, I doubt it. If they paused at all, it was likely so they could ponder being on movie sets in exotic locations, houses in Beverley Hills, magazine covers, and the sheer joy that would come with every opportunity to puff their chests and say, “Yeah, that’s my kid.”

That’s why there will be hundreds of people at that audition. Maybe thousands. All in search of that elusive dream that for a very long time has trapped unwitting souls like flies in honey.

I’ll admit I was not always immune. I was the seven-year-old kid standing in front of the bathroom mirror with Dad’s comb in my hand, singing the second verse of Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising” (because that’s how I rolled). I not only pretended to be Luke Skywalker, I pretended to be Mark Hamill playing Luke Skywalker.

I was a world-famous explorer who found Atlantis and the first person to walk on Mars. I was responsible for ending the Communist threat. I hit the game-winning home run in twelve straight World Series.

Imagination, sure. But even at that age, I knew there was something else going on. Something deeper.

I wanted to stand out. To be remembered.

I think we all do.

But I think wanting to be remembered isn’t enough. It’s what we want to be remembered FOR.

And I think that more than anything is why my kids will be kept far away from the Hollywood wolves about to descend upon my mountains. Not because of the enormous odds that they won’t succeed, but because of the infinitesimal chance that they will. I don’t dislike celebrities because they’ve been given good lives, I dislike them because they’ve been given good lives and tend to live them so horribly.

I want more for my children than magazine covers and fancy houses. I want them to know that we are not defined by what we have, but by what we become from what we have.

Getting what we’re owed

image courtesy of globalpost.com
image courtesy of globalpost.com

“Hmph” is all he says, and barely that.

Just a bit of air expelled through two tautened lips. He could say more—wants to, I’m sure—but the presence of two grandchildren in the room prevents any further commentary. That’s a shame. You’ve never fully appreciated the news until you’ve watched it alongside my father’s commentary.

The pictures on the television are the sort that’s been played and replayed for a while now—tents and marches and protest, people with microphones shouting down with this and up with that. It’s all a little too much, especially with the grandkids sitting there (right now they’re working on the Play-Doh, but I know they’re watching the screen).

I ask him if I should turn the channel. He works the chaw of Beechnut in his cheek and shakes his head. “Wanna see who won the race,” he says.

So I watch the screen and I watch him and I watch my kids and I know that I am in the middle. I’m the bridge between him and them. I’m the link to hold the chain. And I realize that it really wasn’t that long ago—if you can call twenty years long—that I was sure my father had no idea what the world was all about.

I think your teenage years are proof that the more you think you know, the dumber you really are.

My kids—his grandkids—are watching now. They’re showing a policeman pepper-spraying a young man with long hair. Dad watches, too. I’m wondering what they’re all thinking and if what they’re thinking is pretty much the same. I think so. I think when you get right down to it, crazy looks crazy no matter what age you are.

In the end (and as it should), Play-Doh wins out over the news. The kids don’t care what’s happening a thousand miles away in some city. Their world’s here in the mountains, where things are quiet and life makes more sense. But Dad, he keeps watching and working that chaw, turning it around in his mouth, thinking.

He’s been in a good mood lately. Not that he isn’t usually, just more so now. After thirty-five years of work, he has only three days left. Appropriately enough, Thanksgiving Day will be his first day of retirement.

It hasn’t been easy, those thirty-five years. The ones before it weren’t easy, either. He took the job for the same reason that many husbands and fathers do—because it paid well and offered a better life for his family. Certainly it wasn’t because he enjoyed it—who would enjoy driving a rig up and down the Southeast, being separated from family, living off greasy truck stop food?

But he did it anyway. Day in, day out, through blizzards and tornados and hurricanes and floods. As a child I would pray every night for his safety. I still do. And God’s watched over him—Dad’s driven over three million miles without an accident. Back in ’98, he had a stroke just outside of Fredericksburg. The doctors couldn’t understand how he managed to drive his rig into the terminal and back it up to the dock before falling out of the cab. I could. It was his job, simple as that.

His formal education ended at the eighth grade. He grew up in poverty and hustled pool, but the Army straightened him out. And when it came time to marry and start a family, he swore he would give his kids a better life than he had.

That’s exactly what he did.

On the television, one of the protesters says he’s there because he wants a free education. He’s owed that, he says, though he doesn’t really say why. Dad doesn’t say what he thinks of that, and I’m thankful. If he did, I’d have to write it with a lot of ampersands and exclamation points.

Because Dad and his eight-grade education knows more about the world than the people on television and their college degrees. Because he knows that no one is owed anything, and the sooner you realize that the better off you’ll be. Because you have to work and scrape and save and drive the truck.

He won’t say that only those who have stood up to work should have the right to sit down and protest. The grandkids are in the room.

So I’ll just say it for him. Because after thirty-five years, I think he’s earned it.

Dinging the universe

Steve Jobs image courtesy of photobucket.com
Steve Jobs image courtesy of photobucket.com

I’ll admit I’m a little late on the death of Steve Jobs. Truth be told, I didn’t know he’d died until two days after the fact. It was all over the news and the internet, people tell me. And you couldn’t pick up a newspaper without seeing his face on the front page. I guess that’s why I hadn’t heard. I don’t really keep up with the news. I’ve found it helps me enjoy the world more.

More truth: I hate computers. Maybe that’s the half-Amish side of me talking. Maybe I’m secretly afraid technology will steal my soul. Or maybe it’s the simple fact that I’ve never been able to work them well. Whichever the case, I count myself among the few who trust pen and paper more than keyboard and screen.

I heard last week that his biography, titled simply Steve Jobs, will be released sooner than expected. Evidently he granted his biographer unparalleled access to his life and sat for hours of interviews. Quite a coup, given that Mr. Jobs was a pretty private man. The book is already number one on Amazon. Sony purchased the movie rights for a million dollars.

Imagine, someone paying a million dollars for the rights to make a movie about your life. Your accomplishments. Imagine being called this century’s Thomas Edison. Or being compared to Leonardo da Vinci.

Imagine.

And yes, that’s the sort of person I’d like to be. Shouldn’t we all? I’m around college kids five days a week, almost ten hours a day. You know what? Most of them don’t want to become great. Most of them have somehow become convinced that they’re already great. They don’t want to affect the world, they want the world to affect them. I think that’s kind of sad.

I think there should be more people who say “I want to put a ding in the universe,” as Steve Jobs once said.

That’s what he did. He dinged the universe. But I wonder at what cost. His biography was written with his permission, he sat down and did all those candid interviews, not for the reason you might think. Not to inspire or inform the world Steve Jobs helped to transform, but simply because of this:

“I want my kids to know who I am.”

Of all the things I’ve read about Steve Jobs over the last week or so, that’s the one that stands out. Not the iPod or the iPad or the iPhone, but the iWant.

It takes a lot of effort to put a ding into the universe. A lot of time and failure and trying again. A lot of passion. It demands that priorities be set clear. Things like work take precedent. Things like family do not. And while I’m thankful for the Steve Jobs of the world and their dedication, the sacrifice the make is one too steep for me.

Steve Jobs’ death struck me. By all accounts he was a brilliant man who changed our world. There are a good many people in this world who long for those two things—to be both brilliant and remembered. I don’t mind saying I count myself among them. But honestly, the odds are good I’ll be neither. Maybe you, too. More probable than not, I will pass through this life just as the billions before me. My footprints upon this earth will be small and vanish. My picture will never grace the front page. The world will not notice my passing.

I will not ding the universe.

But when my time comes to trade this world for the next, I will pass with a smile. I’ll be ready, because I may not have much, but my kids will know who I am.

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