The creative process is always an adventure.
It's my belief that we're put here in physical form by the Universe in order to be creative - not destructive - beings. And since I made the decision many years ago to pursue a career supported by my skewed imagination, the joy I bring to my life by playing in my own mental sandbox is incredibly rewarding.
Being creative is enervating. When you're writing, or drawing, or making music, or sculpting, or whatever you do that puts a little happiness in your heart, it's one of the most rewarding spaces in which you can find yourself. Time stops. The world fades away. All your cares and concerns get swept aside. When you're in "the zone", you have no clue what ideas or notions or thoughts are going to come your way. If you're open to your Muse, the creative flashes just come to you, like individually wrapped gifts straight from the Ether. When I finally put one of these articles to bed, I love pouring myself a few fingers of bourbon, and basking in the glow of my latest verbose achievement.
But it's not all sunshine and puppies and gum drops. Sometimes, the creative process is a teeth-grinding headache-inducing hump-busting drag.
And that's my current take, because this particular installment of my insignificant internet column has been mule-kicking my imagination for a couple of weeks now. Not because I couldn't select an album to talk about... I put together a list of music well over a year ago that I've been diligently making my way through since April of 2020. And the delay isn't for lack of content... trust me, this week's subject could have filled terabytes of storage had I not judiciously applied my editing skills to the material.
No, what's been holding me back this go 'round has been my inability to zero in on a theme. A strong throughline of subtext that gives my stupid story a little "oomph", making it more than just a narcissistic stroll down memory lane. Early on, I kind of got into a groove with my lame need to include a message of sorts every time... and now it's biting me on the butt.
The column you're about to read is full of anecdotes about a close friendship... but I've covered that multiple times before. It's set during that amazing period of my life when I was in college... but several installments have involved that era. It's also about personal growth... but Shiva H. Vishnu, I'm dangerously close to beating that horse to death, too. At the end of the day, this is just another silly story about a life-long friend who showed an immature kid how to have confidence in who he was.
But I gotta say, there is a little bit of a twist this time. This time, the expected musical connection isn't the usual "we both loved this song" situation. It's actually more visual. Although the associated songs are indeed classic, it's the album's iconic imagery that puts a flutter in my solar plexus even as I type this out. I never could have foreseen that a simple gift would result in my entire college experience being represented by one photograph, five years summed up in the cool black and white gaze of...
PETER GABRIEL.
I've mentioned my friend Steve before, but in service to the tale I was telling, I kind of blew past his introduction and dove right into our cartoon strip hijinks. The thing is, in the annals of my twisted history, Steve deserves more than a paragraph or two. Had I the time (and if my editor Brandon would allow it) I'd fill up the Trouble City webhosting servers with story after stupid story. If my friend Frank was the big brother I never had, Steve was the heaven-sent mentor that I never knew I needed. Truthfully, there might be no person on this planet more responsible for who I have become than Steve.
Steve was older than me by a handful of years, which instantly gave him a level of "prestige" that my barely-out-of-high-school ass had yet to develop. He was insanely well-read. He was athletic. He was whip-smart. He held court from a giant Falcon Crest-like wicker chair situated in the corner of his dorm room. He was personable, but he kept a little something in reserve, just enough to cultivate a slight Prince-like aura of mystique. Whereas Frank approached the world like a lovable golden retriever puppy, all id and guilelessness, Steve was more reserved, like a street-smart tomcat, evaluating every person and opportunity placed before him. That may sound pretentious, and to be honest, there were some in the dorm who didn't "get" Steve. But once you passed his muster, you were in for a treat.
The thing is, none of Steve's monumental attributes and assets would have been worth accepting, if he had been some sort of jerk. He wasn't. Far from it, he was gregarious and eager to interact with people who had something to offer. And apparently, I fit that profile. I'm no slouch when it comes to being spontaneously funny, and he was impressed that I could go toe-to-toe with him when it came to word play, twisted humor, and downright personal abuse. The more we verbally sparred, the more he realized he'd found a kindred spirit.
But when he saw my stupid super hero cartoon, he was galvanized. As he had been a big fan of "Doonesbury" when he was younger, he'd always wanted his own illustrated vehicle in which he could publicize his thoughts and opinions. He wanted a soapbox of sorts, and I wanted to draw funny pictures. Entwining our mutual desires, we birthed "Over The Wall". But Steve didn't stop there. He wanted to see how far we could go with our pen-and-ink nuttiness. To that end, we whipped up the crappiest strip ever, which he dubbed "Four Dollars", after the amount the paper paid for a single published strip. He banged out the script in five minutes, and I scribbled out the artwork in about three seconds. "Four Dollars" was dumb and sloppy. As you can imagine, it was rejected by the editors outright. But that didn't bum Steve out. If anything, he was over the moon that we'd created something so hideous that even a college paper wouldn't publish it.
The worst comic strip ever created. Even worse than Cathy.
Steve didn't wait for life to bring adventures his way. No, almost every day he set out to create adventures on his terms. Back in his younger days, he'd been part of a group of hyper-smart and hyper-bored kids that ran around and had what I'll euphemistically call "escapades". Although he'd left most of that nonsense behind when he became a responsible college student, there was still the heart of the rebel inside him. And he was more than happy to bring me under his "rules are meant to be bent" tutelage.
With Steve as my unofficial mentor, we created a slew of small but memorable adventures. I learned how to prank public safety officers without getting caught. (The big secret: cross as many major streets as you can.) By straying off the hiking path of the local state park, he led me to a secret rock wall where I did my first free climbing. Astride a friend's moped, we zipped past disapproving joggers and dog walkers as we sped along the sloped wall of the local reservoir. On Wednesday nights, along with Frank, we'd commandeer the dining hall's TV to watch "The Equalizer" while scarfing down disgusting amounts of all-you-can-eat food. Steve jimmied open the entryway to the campus' subterranean steam tunnels, leading a small group of us on an urban spelunking excursion through the cramped, sweltering bowels of the university. One night we snuck into the new gym facility that was under construction, becoming the first people to see the then-unique forty-foot-high indoor rock climbing wall. As a ne'er-do-well Batman and Robin we ran amok, peacefully, reveling in the dumbest of rebellious stunts.
But above and beyond all that nonsense, one evening in particular stands out as a watershed moment... not only in our friendship, but in my life.
On a very cold and clear March night, Steve bundled me and his roommate Simon into a car and drove us to a lonely spot on the edge of the nearby airport. Hopping a fence, we walked for about a mile or so along a service road, before veering off into the woods. Eventually we emerged from the treeline into a small clearing, and there in front of us, looming eight stories high and silhouetted in the dim ambient light from the runways beyond, was an abandoned water tower. Steve and his friends had discovered it in high school, and for years it had been their private secret.
As Simon and I stood there goggle-eyed, Steve pried open the hatch at the bottom of the central support pillar. After a very claustrophobic and filthy climb up the rusty service ladder, we were inside the empty steel reservoir ball. Reclining against the sloped sides, we spent a few moments harmonizing, enjoying the incredible acoustics inside the metallic shell.
But the adventure wasn't over. Not by a long shot. Mounting another small ladder bolted to the wall, I gasped when I popped out of the top of the tower. From this incredible vantage point, I could see the entire metropolitan area laid out before me in a full three hundred sixty degree panorama. To the north, planes coming in for a landing. To the south, the red and white lights of the cars on the highway. To the east, the latticework of neighborhoods that stretched off to the horizon. To the west, the darkness of all the farmland and state park forests between me and home. And when I dared to tilt my head all the way back, my eyes were filled by a cloudless sky, an inky black dome embedded with more stars than I'd ever seen in my entire life.
I remember laughing with tears in my eyes, my emotions tumbling out of me as I took in the vastness Steve had gifted me. There above the tree tops, with what seemed like the entirety of human civilization below me and the sweep of the Universe's majesty above me, I had my first spiritual awakening. I felt bigger than the solar system, and yet smaller than a mote of dust. It was, in a word, awesome.
When I came down from my contact high with the Universe, and looked over at Steve to thank him, I found him stretched out on his back, enjoying the view with a big smile on his face. Even though the experience of looking out over our little world was an adventure he'd already experienced many times over, he still took joy in sharing it.
Steve and I having a blast at the 1986 Gelo-Monster in Virginia. (Thanks to Ann Harper for the photo.)
Steve was what they call in Hollywood a "multi-hyphenate". He was a scholar-paleontologist-athlete-hoodlum-poet-adventurer. He was imbued with a bevy of strengths and talents, some of them innate, some of them self-taught. But the one thing he wasn't, was musical.
Oh, he wanted to be. One of his personality quirks was that he'd fixate on a line from a song, and sing it over and over, trying to nail the delivery. He considered these songs "godlike", a phrase he used incessantly. And these snippets of music would just burst out of him, whenever the mood struck him. I remember running into him in the hall one day after class and asking him what was up. Instead of replying, he belted out The Who’s "Loooove, reign o'er me! Rain on me! Rain on ME-ee-eeeee!". One day, at the mailbox, he turned to me and sang "Two. Of. Hearts!" from the Stacey Q song of the same name. (He even did the little two-finger dance move from the video.) Steve absolutely loved babbling the only line of Young MC's "Bust A Move" he could remember: "Your best friend Harry/Has a brother Larry/In five days from now he's gonna marry". Almost every single day, I'd be hit with his feeble attempts to sing. One mangled line at a time.
But having a tin ear doesn't preclude someone from having great musical taste, and in that regard, Steve was once again at the top of his game. I can thank Steve for making me a life-long fan of Yes. One day he forced me to sit still and listen to "Starship Trooper", off The Yes Album. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard, and from that moment on, I was hooked. (Godlike indeed!) When he was on the road attending fencing tournaments, he'd borrow my tape of Howard Jones' Human's Lib, so that he could listen to "What Is Love?" over and over at full volume, to psyche himself up for the competitions. (And it worked! He was high up in the NCAA rankings that year.) Maybe he was secretly a frustrated musician who never followed his muse, but that didn't stop him from enjoying music tremendously.
And here's where the story takes a turn... where the music takes a backseat to, of all things, the album cover.
Peter Gabriel’s hit song "Sledgehammer" was released just after my spring 1986 semester ended, so I had an entire summer of enjoying that tune (and the follow up single, "Big Time") on my own, before returning to college and geeking out with my friend Erik over So, Gabriel's big break into popular culture. Already a PG fan from way back, Erik proceeded to gobble up all sorts of imported singles and live albums thanks to John Swain over at The Record Hole, at the same time introducing me to Gabriel's prior albums (and their incredible sleeve artwork). It's because of Erik that I went from being a Peter Gabriel listener to a Peter Gabriel nut. To this day we share any rare tracks we stumble across, insuring we both own every single note of music Gabriel's performed.
But Steve wasn't part of all that obsessive nerdiness. While Erik and I were being pathetic, Steve had been working part-time at a book store. And when the manager decided it was time to get rid of the advertising material they'd been using for the summer, Steve grabbed a few damaged books, and a cut-out promotional flat for So. According to his story, he tossed Gabriel's black and white headshot onto his car's dashboard when he was leaving work. As he was driving home, he suddenly realized that Gabriel's face was being reflected, ghost-like, onto the inside of the windshield. And he had an "a-ha!" moment, dreaming up a potential patent for heads-up displays in cars, so that the driver wouldn't have to look down and take their eyes off the road. He explained all this to me one night as he drove me around the fringes of town, Peter Gabriel on the dashboard, looking back at us through his transparent reflection.
Imagine my surprise, and delight, when months later, Steve absentmindedly gifted me that precious Peter Gabriel cut-out as he was cleaning out his room. I hadn't told him how infinitely important that small piece of paper was to me... I was too afraid of sounding crazy. He just handed it to me. It's as if the Hovitos just handed Indiana Jones the golden idol. No poison arrows, no treacherous Alfred Molina... the treasure was mine!
That So poster then spent a good twenty-five years traveling with me, from Raleigh to Greensboro to Silicon Valley to Berkeley to Los Angeles. And when I finally got the space to have my very own home office, I had a my slightly-mangled Steve keepsake mounted in a shadow box. Peter Gabriel now hangs on the wall, safe from any further harm, behind my desk. Although I can't see him, I know he's there, inspiring me to be the creative being I was born to be. Poets have Erato as their Muse, dancers have Terpsichore, astronomers have Urania... apparently the Muse of pathetic cat-loving geeky wannabe writers is Peter Gabriel.
Thirty-plus years later, Peter and Steve are still inspiring me every day.
In the process of seeing Peter Gabriel’s face almost every day for three decades, the cover to So has transcended being just the iconic sleeve artwork to one of my favorite albums ever. That's not a backhanded swipe at the actual music contained therein, by the way! The classic funk-homage of "Sledgehammer", the propulsive satire of "Big Time", the plaintive emotion of "Don't Give Up", the powerful declarations of "In Your Eyes", the apocalyptic majesty of "Red Rain"... So is staggering in its diversity, its construction, its craft. Gabriel's creative engine was firing on all cylinders when he recorded this album, and it deserves to be ranked as one of the greatest albums of the 80s, if not of all time. (Bonus fanboy raving: his followup, Us, is just as good!)
But that simple image, that stark black and white photograph of a musician at the peak of his powers, has taken on a bigger meaning for me. Because of my undying hetero man-love for my friend Steve, and my deep appreciation for Peter Gabriel's music, that stupid So flat became a symbol, of sorts. A symbol of the life I was carving out for myself, leaving behind my “mama's boy” mindset and exploring the world around me. A symbol of the unfettered fun I was having on my own terms, with people that mattered and appreciated me. A symbol that I wasn't some pathetic doofus, I was a vibrant doofus who had finally found his tribe and his voice.
The cover of So has become what is perhaps the one image that symbolizes the entirety of my college years (both before and after the release of the album), that magic time I never saw coming, that womb I knew I'd have to leave eventually but would always be a part of me.
I see the cover of So, and I remember eagerly walking into the dorm at the beginning of each fall semester. I remember long stretches of time spent in the computer lab. I remember slaving away at the snack bar just to put a few bucks in my pocket. I remember browsing the racks of the local record stores for new music. I remember bright eyes and big smiles and passionate nights and afternoon lazing. I remember getting back into comic books after years of not reading. I remember the summer session I spent in the TKE frat house. I remember sharing cold pizza and warm laughter. I remember fighting with my parents, who didn't understand that my personality changes weren't due to drugs, I was just growing up... and away. I remember all the years and years of discovering myself.
Most importantly, I remember the people. The goofballs I ran into and pursued and was introduced to. The dozens and dozens of fellow students who I'm still proud to call my friends. Burhan. Frank. Erik. Ann. Simon. Dennis. Johan. Iñigo. Kevin. Olivier. Vickie. Stuart. Cliff. Rob. Armando. And a host of others, too many to name in this small space. They're all people I can unapologetically say that I love. So many friends, so much love.
And Steve is definitely on that list. At the risk of hurting the feelings of everyone I know from the college days, maybe he's even at the top. He opened up my personal horizons, showing me in his tacit, experiential way that I was perfectly fine being the way I wanted to be. Goofy, creative, snarky, humorous, lusty, loyal... Every facet of my personality was an asset, not a detriment. He helped me see that if the world wasn't happy with what I had to offer, it was the world's problem, not mine.
Eventually, Don the mentee grew and evolved to a point where he didn't need Steve the mentor helping him along anymore. But I never forgot Steve's "lessons", such as they were. Even without consciously thinking about him, he was there in the background, influencing my decisions and reactions and impulses and personality in so many subtle ways. The fact that my So flat is here in my office is proof enough of that.
Thanks to Steve, and his off-hand gift of Peter Gabriel's stoic countenance, every day I'm creating my own adventure.
(Holy crap! I did it! I came up with a theme! And I made it work! Dammit, Suzie, let go of that bottle of Woodford Reserve... Daddy wants to celebrate!)
Okay, I can't stand it... I have to do this. I can't talk about this album and not include this video, because it's arguably the greatest music video ever made. EVER. Enjoy!
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and - finally - an award-winning screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his long-suffering wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.