It might be that every post is about my father. Pisces season approaches and I am haunted and all that and.
Burt Bacharach died yesterday.
You have to understand my father first. (Every post is about him because he is a delicious portrait to draw and I have never done it justice.)
He was an asshole. Like. That was his entire thing. The apartment we banned together to clean out when he died was in a historical home in a (gradually, it wasn't there then) gentrifying neighborhood of Salt Lake. There was, for instance, a boxing club down the block. A mural painted on the squat cinder block of it advertising to its clientele. It was, for instance, referred to as "the gayborhood" because why wouldn't the stylish queer folk of SLC be drawn to big windows and carpet pulled back to reveal the most beautiful hardwood floors? He did not have a bedroom. He had a den filled (as the entire flat was) with books. He slept, as far as we could tell, on a mattress he stowed in the closet when he entertained. Which he did often. He was a regular at Caputo's, the luxury Italian grocery and sandwich spot. He loved charcuterie before we knew that was the word to use. He was doing olive meat cheese spreads in 2002 and it was classy as fuck and delicious and his table was round and dark wood and landscaped within an inch of its life.
He kept a gallon of vodka in the freezer and invited me to a party once (the one time. I was shamed for talking too much and fast--not by him--and for considering moving to Washington DC for a boy for the summer--absolutely by him. My best friend witnessed the conversation, why why why? and his reaction was how I knew it was absurdly demeaning. A hot priest moment if there ever was one) where that and roasted baby potatoes were the main offerings. A themed part but make it so cool!
He decorated with vintage Russian icons. And beautiful rugs. He wore long coats all year long (a heavy black one in the winter--the one we buried him in--a khaki trench on cool summer days). He was to be seen walking his white Borzoi, whose name is Sasha and was fed raw chicken thighs and is an entirely separate essay because how do I even start, in said khaki trench with a straw fedora and leather loafers, no socks, all around his neighborhood.
Which is to say. Dennis (he hated when we called him that) was fucking cool. He was a character. He lived in a whole aesthetic universe which I appreciate mainly because I live in a slightly derivative version of it. He smoked cigars. His favorite author was Joseph Conrad (another essay). When panhandlers approached him for money he was concise and unnecessarily cruel (HE WAS AN ASSHOLE).
And.
Dennis loved Burt Bacharach.
Dennis? Between party music and Edith Piaf and some (I think very chic) samba (oh and Rush Limbaugh which when I say is another essay and also fucking Rush Limbaugh...)? Listened to soft jazz. Almost exclusively.
There was this moment of my life.
Now I know that my dad was cheating on my mom. Spending money we didn't have on an apartment in Miami and on flights from Utah to Miami. And probably idk hotels and fancy meals in Miami. In two or three years we moved from a big house on the mountainside to my grandmother's basement ((we were homeless!!! I yell because that is what happened and what the actual fuck you guys)) to a condo in a development mostly for old people where we got yelled at for not being supervised and picking everyone's flowers. My parents filed for bankruptcy. My dad punched my mom in the face and broke her finger and like. Disappeared for weeks at a time on drug seeking binges (he was maybe also an innovator in opioid addiction? Charcuterie and opioids?) Certainly lots of other things because everything I know about that period I've had to deduce from crumbs my very Mormon and very noncommunicative and very anti-mental health family has let drop by accident or under direct questioning. I was ten and did not know what the fuck was going on (I found a picture of me from then yesterday--not grown into my teeth or glasses yet, wearing the absolute saddest dirtiest pair of stretched out baby pink stretch pants and a button up I remember liking. Looking for all the world like the half-forgotten kid I was--smelled like piss, ass itching from no toilet paper, mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch. I put it away before I let the feelings come. I'm sure they're there).
Do you know what I do remember? Dionne Warwick's greatest hits. Message to Michael and Do You Know the Way to Santa Fe and Don't Make me Over. I love these songs. I love them unhindered by any of the weird unspoken garbage that clouds almost every memory of this handful of years. I have magical memories of dancing to them in the backseat of the white sedan, with my sister, absolutely delighting in the stories they told. The emotions. The bubble and froth of those melodies.
My dad listened to that cassette on repeat for a least a year and little else. Now, I am forty and also reevaluating my life though, I think, slightly less dramatically and slightly less encumbered by addiction and shame (I am deep enough in this moment to understand that I may still blow everything up and people will definitely have to pick up their own pieces and there will be parts that aren't pretty. It is. A very grounding experience.) and I also find myself rediscovering the music of my former life. For me it looks like arguing on Twitter that Weezer's Blue was a perfect (not the perfect) album, and spending a rainy drive listening to August and Everything After. And I wonder how my boys will approach these songs in middle age.
I wonder what Dionne Warwick's Greatest Hits were to my dad. I wonder what version of himself they conjured, what imperfection they introduced to his highly curated aesthetic life.
I find myself arrested by the music of Burt Bacharach. It doesn't end up being the easy listening experience it promises because the ease of it, the way it goes down so smooth, the parts of me it appeals to--soft and heat-set--all of those are suspect. It appeals to a part of me so deep-down and battered by the layers of irony and snark and self awareness I've applied and sanded and applied and sanded that when it emerges it's like spotting a dear in the woods. You stop in your tracks. You appreciate its grace. You realize it could kick your ass if it wanted to (another essay: When Animals Attack). You let it decide which direction it's going to run in.
Burt Bacharach appeals because he doesn't let you be hardnosed. He goes for the easy rhymes and the easy harmonies. He is just making things that feel and taste and look good. And like all art in that vein it's so easily commodified and mass-produced and replicated that it's easy to forget that it is art, under all the soft lighting and wigs and stage make-up there is a beating heart there. And of course soft lighting and wigs and stage make-up are art! Maybe this is the point I'm trying to make.
Maybe Dennis knew that. Maybe he was pining for the sex appeal and glamour of the Zoobie Zoobie scene in Mad Men, because of course Bacharach was also trafficking in that. I don't know and I won't know and I think it's weird and funny he ended up, hard ass as he was, listening to the absolute worst godawful perversion of what I think, once, was art. Served him right.
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