In My Father's Words

[Pony]

In My Father’s Words
by
Anthony Rain Starez

For the most part, my father and I shared few conversations that went deeply below the surface of small talk. There were more passionate discussions about music; Miami’s music scene, or music history; jazz history was a big topic, as he was a jazz musician, private music teacher and jazz historian who taught a jazz history course at the local college. Off limits to discussions were World events, or sports, or tragedy of any kind. My father would stop me cold, and say, “I really can’t talk about negative things. It’s bad energy!” I figured, ‘at least he was honest’, and I would always move to safer territory, but soon conversations would dwindle, and pleasantries were exchanged, and a ‘Goodbye’ that included an ‘I love you!’

Our relationship was odd, at times, but there were odd reasons, and I tried not to hold him totally responsible, and I still don’t. My father was a consummate musician, obsessed with playing music, and living the lifestyle that went along with playing in clubs until wee hours of the morning, drug use, womanizing, many friends vying for his attention and quick-naps here and there for required rest. My dad was married to music first. It was all he really wanted to do since he was a child. You could easily make the argument he was one-track minded, but it wasn’t that he didn’t care about me, or my sister, or my mother in the old days, or his second wife who had been his wife since the ’70s, he just had a “mission” that took a lot of energy that he needed, for his own peace-of-mind, to devote to. And to his credit, my father won a lot of my respect through his devotion to his art because being a musician myself I’ve learned the difficult road it is to succeed, or eek out a living solely through music. But my dad worked hard at finding other musicians, finding gigs, exposure via newspaper articles, playing as a studio musician; even playing in Europe for a while as a street-musician, which he loved.

My father, on the surface, was a carefree, easy-going, loose kind of guy, and his many friends adored that about him. He was fun to be around as a buddy, and most of his buddies were fellow musicians. However, I always felt a deep current of anger and pain that seem to run through his life like the way an undertow is hidden in the ocean, very strong, and not apparent to the eye. He was raised in Brooklyn, NY, by his parents who were both blessed with impressive looks, but who were dysfunctional in behavior and lacked parenting skills, or guidance, or warm love. So, from an early age, my dad found his own way around a big city, rich with arts, and a jazz scene that reminds me of how rock/pop music grew up later. At that time, jazz was the hip, underground, non-commercial music that the “cool cats” were drawn to, and my dad’s biggest heroes were mostly African American jazz players, like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

My mother and father divorced when I was 10 years old, and after a few visits to Miami to see him, I never saw him again until after a bad car accident that left me paralyzed, and in a wheelchair at the age of 21. I was in Baltimore, MD, at the time, and I got his phone number through someone that felt like I should find my dad. I was very nervous, but made the call, and we acted as though nothing very traumatic had happened, and we talked about music. I intensely love music, and had become a musician myself, playing piano and guitar, but only as a mental-recreation; so, music was our common ground where we met. However, my thirst for knowing the man as my father was rarely quenched.

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We stayed in touch, and I remember him sending me some recordings he’d made, but I was desperate to leave Baltimore and start a new life in a warm exciting place like Miami, so I had my father, who was called Jet all his life—it made a great stage name—rent me an efficiency near his home, and I hopped a plane to Miami in January of 1982. The dramatic temperature change from nasty cold Winter to warm ,no-jacket, weather was just what my body needed since I seemed to always be cold after my injury.

Years went by, and I had met up with my mother and moved from Miami to the Tampa Bay area of Florida, about 300 miles away. We formed a team together, and I went to college, while she worked at night as a CNA (Certified Nurse’s Aide). I, eventually, graduated with a degree in Mass Communications from the University of South Florida, and I worked some as a writer for music publications. Like my father, my gifts were in music, and I needed to be around the scene, so I wrote about it, but secretly I still had desires to play music in some capacity, however, I knew that might not be possible without much finger movement from my injury that paralyzed me at a high-level on my spine.

One year my dad sent me a small keyboard not knowing if I could do anything with it, and I must admit, at first, I thought it was a ridiculous gift. But after not touching for a month, I began to try banging out simple melodies with my knuckles, and creating songs, or small riffs. From there, I wanted more, so I bought a small recorder that I began recording four separate tracks, and singing over the song. These were rough sounding recordings, but it helped me to feel like a musician again. I remember telling my dad what a great thing he did by giving me that keyboard, and how he must’ve knew something that I didn’t.

More years went by, and I became a decent singer, realizing it was my one instrument that I could really play without needing good hands. I met a good guitar player and studio producer, named, George Harris, who decided he would work with me on recording some original music that we wrote together using my very basic ideas. The recordings came out well, and led to an art grant, playing live on radio and finding other musicians to play with. Since those days, I’ve played with different guitar players and band situations in clubs, bars and coffeehouses. I even played for a restaurant/bar owner on Clearwater Beach that had hired my dad to play his club in Miami many years before, and they were quite good friends. To me, it was a powerful connection to my dad who I wanted to feel closer to emotionally.

A few more years went by and while my father and I were on the phone one night he casually mentioned something about Cancer. I wasn’t sure I heard him right, so I backed him up and asked him if he had Cancer. He said, as if surprised I caught it, “Yes, I have Leukemia!” I questioned him further, feeling kind of strange of how I was finding out. I knew he’d been getting sick often, and the last time I saw him he had looked emaciated, but I simply chalked it up to old age. He told me he found out about it a few years ago when he was going to play a gig on one of the many cruise ships that left Miami, destined for the Caribbean. The cruise ship management forced the band to take a blood test with a physician, and they discovered his blood count was not right. The doctor wanted to do more testing, and possible chemo treatment, but my father declined, ignoring the seriousness. Maybe it was denial in it’s greatest form, but my dad never really trusted doctors, or any authoritarian for that matter, so I could see him doing that easily. I have to confess, I have a bit of that, myself!

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My dad was absolutely determined to not focus on his disease, so it was rarely discussed, but as he became more frequently sick and hospitalized, my dad recognized that this weight would one day take him under the water. Still, my father was an incredibly resilient man, each time he was hospitalized he would use this time to write music, desperately planning ways to reach people with recordings.

During one hospital stay, dad began writing poetry, and it was very good. He told me afterwards that it was my stories that touched him enough to try. He told me he never felt close to words. He only wanted music, but when I sent him my stories he could not stop reading. And now he wanted to express his self this way. Well, this was huge to me, as I never felt I had inspired him in any way, and it was, and is to this day, the biggest credit to my writing. All I’ve ever wanted to do was touch others with music or writing. The power in these two forms of communicating can change lives, and a piece of my father and I needed to, at least, attempt to make someone feel something. Playing music in bars isn’t exactly painting the Mona Lisa, but it was the platform for which we both aspired.

Through all of my dad’s sickness, I rarely got to see him, as I was living in the Tampa Bay area, and he in Miami. It doesn’t seem an impossible distance, except my own disability from a car accident kept me from visiting easily. I must confess that even though I loved my father, I didn’t always care to be around him—I was uncomfortable most times, and he never seemed like much of a traditional father-figure. Anyway, the phone calls became more frequent as he got sicker, and I felt our feelings for each other grew stronger.

It was during one of our phone conversations while he was in the hospital that my dad told me he was sorry for not being a better father when I was a child. I was shocked, but managed to tell him that we all have made mistakes, but that I still loved him very much. He never knew how much that meant to me because we didn’t discuss that again, but those simple words washed all my pain away. I was now a complete son with a father, and while our relationship wasn’t perfect, I knew we had crossed a bridge together. My father’s words were the best gift he ever gave me, and the timing was impeccable as he soon passed away on March 2, 2002.

I remember calling him in the hospital room on a Friday from my job. He said, “Tony, it’s so good to hear from you son. I wasn’t sure I’d make it because I wasn’t breathing well, and I was going into deep dreams, but they’re sending me home. I’ll call you when I get home and settled.”

My dad died Sunday morning, but his words live on in my soul forever, and now these words live on in you.