#68: Björk – Post

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Throughout the next however many months I’ll be counting down my 100 favorite albums, because why not. I’m up to number sixty-eight.

“This is me,” I said as we arrived at my car on the third floor of the parking garage.

“Ah. I’m one level up.”

“This was fun. It was great meeting and hanging out with you.” He smiled. “Let’s do this again.” I pulled my phone from my back pocket. “Can I have your number?”

His smile vanished, his face now looking like he got a whiff of a pungent malodorous cheese. “Wh-what? My phone number? Wh-why? No!” And with that, he turned. He didn’t walk away. He didn’t scurry. He Jesse-Owens-at-the-1936-Olympics ran.

I’d been in Los Angeles for two years and still couldn’t figure out the rules of engagement.

It’s not that I was thrilled  about living here, but when Warner Music offered me a six-figure salary and said they’d pay all expenses for me to move from my 200 square foot Manhattan apartment, I couldn’t say no. And while for me, meeting new people is like simultaneously squeezing into my mouth a tennis ball, a running lawnmower and President McKinley (trust me I’ve tried), I already got a jump start as I had a friend in LA.

I met Victor on a trip to Mexico a few years earlier. I called him the day I arrived here, and we made plans to hang out the coming Sunday. I was psyched to see him and be shown hot spots. A friend of a friend of an acquaintance of someone Victor met somewhere doing something invited him to a house party, so he suggested we stop over there on our way to nowhere in particular. Cool. I could meet more people. At the party house we were greeted at the front door by a chirpy twenty-something blonde-haired woman wearing a colorful top and blue denim miniskirt. “Welcome! The cocaine is over there.” She motioned toward a room to our right, presumably the drug den. She then walked away. I shot Victor a look that said “I’m 100% drug free. What kind of party have you taken me to?” His face shot back a grin that said “Welcome to Hollywood.” It was jarring, as nobody in New York does drugs.

###

In NY, I’d walk from my shoebox to Madison Square Garden to see Lauryn Hill or Britney Spears or Prince or whomever, then walk home, or I’d subway to Radio City Music Hall to see Aretha Franklin or Pet Shop Boys or k.d. lang or to the Beacon Theater to see Sinéad O’Connor (and concert attendee Daniel Day Lewis in the lobby) or Fine Young Cannibals or Seal. I don’t tell you that to show off the artists I’ve seen in concert—it’s not like I mentioned the times I saw Stevie Wonder or George Michael or Annie Lennox IN CENTRAL PARK!!!—but rather to express to you that in New York the audiences were one, united in our love of the act we were seeing, except at Fine Young Cannibals, where we were two – those of us who danced during the show and the guy behind me, who told me that if I didn’t sit down he’d beat the crap out of me. Oh, and one of the times I saw Beastie Boys, two guys threw metal chairs at each other. Other than that, each show was a lovefest by New York City standards. After the shows, everyone was still abuzz as we got on the subway, smiling and singing and knowing that we were way cooler than anyone else on that train or any train. Los Angeles provides a different experience. You can’t take a train to the theater, unless you can; I’ve never investigated this and don’t intend to. You have to drive to the venue, give up the pretense that you’ll find street parking, and then park at the theater. Some of the larger venues, such as The Hollywood Bowl or The Greek Theater, have “stacked parking,” in which cars are arranged back-to-front, first in first out, in rows where vehicles block each other in. If the folks who arrived at the venue before you did lollygag after the show is over, you must lollygag as well. (“Lollygag me with a spoon” I thought of writing, but then thought better of it.) Waiting and waiting and waiting to move your car while everyone else has to wait and wait and wait is an excruciating experience, and I say that as someone who when getting a filling doesn’t take Novocain. Must I be held captive in a dark parking lot breathing in exhaust fumes just so I can see Cher sing “Believe” live? No. I don’t like Cher that much. 

###

If the city’s infrastructure seems designed to thwart you, its relationship with nature is even more baffling. In New York, rain is a nuisance. But you turn your collar up, you buy a $5 umbrella from a street vendor that will go inside out at the slightest breeze, and you get on with your life. In Los Angeles, rain is an EVENT. It’s the top story on our newscasts, where reporters, cosplaying as Anderson Cooper in war torn wherever, ask the poor downtrodden Angelenos what they did when the precipitation started. “I ran for shelter under this awning!” is the breathless response. Displaced, weary, resilient. Stay strong, Los Angeles!

I was at the office the first time I experienced rain in L.A. It was 1:30 in the afternoon. I noticed scattered raindrops hitting the window and turned back to my computer monitor. “Attention, everybody.” The president of our division got on a loudspeaker that echoed throughout the halls. “It’s starting to rain. You have the option to evacuate. Anyone who wishes to head out now may do so.” It was 1:32. The sprinkle had blossomed into a full-blown drizzle. My colleagues quickly packed items into their go bags—post-it notes, bottles of water, chocolates from that bowl in Kim’s office—and hit the road before the drizzle turned into a light rain and all bets were off. I sat at my desk, listening to the gentle pitter-patter on the window, and came to a stunning conclusion: L.A. is full of pussies.

###

In NY, the answer to your boredom is right outside your door, any day, any time. You step outside and look—a street fair! Look—David Byrne of Talking Heads! Look—one of the taxicab drivers involved in a verbal altercation opened his trunk and removed a baseball bat. I’m not bored. “Cut!” the great director in the sky must have shouted before said bat met skull, and that was alright. The city and I—and both cab drivers—were ALIVE. In LA, you have to get in your car, sit in forty minutes of traffic, arrive at the Arts District neighborhood that the Time Out website assured you was worth the drive, pay ten dollars to park, walk around, past all of the smoothie shops and thrift stores and breweries and bakeries and bail bondsmen to arrive at a shop that the donut review blog Eat My Hole noted as having the best donuts in LA, so you buy one Chocness Monster and one Glaze Anatomy and you eat them and they’re fine, just fine, and you think perhaps you should have ordered a The Filling Is Mutual donut but oh well and as you ponder the credibility of Eat My Hole, you’re downtown and want to get value for your parking expense and you continue strolling but you’re still bored. Where are the steel drum players, the tables of hand-crafted jewelry, the sausages on grills? Where are the road-raged cabbies? Ironic that in New York City one feels like they’re in a movie, while in the land of movies one feels like they’re in a play that as of yet only has a set design.

###

“How’s that sandwich?” The waitress with the strawberry blonde bouffant and Maraschino cherry red lipstick was back at my table. I stared at the sandwich. Then back at her. I had ordered a very basic tuna sandwich. Just rye bread, tuna, and a little mayo. It was meeting every expectation one could reasonably have for chopped fish and mayonnaise on rye. How would it be? One time in New York when I grabbed a dinner with my sister, she had a question for our waitress. “The sautéed oysters – how are they prepared?”, to which the waitress replied “They’re sautéed.” End of discussion.

###

Several years after I moved here I went to a park with a gay picnic group I found on Meetup called LGBTs With BLTs. We’d gather for lunch every couple of weeks at a different park. One didn’t have to have a BLT. I, for example, packed a tuna sandwich. A few bites into it, someone asked “How’s that sandwich?” LA, WTF? Another guy there asked me my age. “47,” I answered. “Really? Wow. I would have guessed 44.” THAT’S NOT A COMPLIMENT! The year before I moved to L.A. a cute guy on the street handed me a flier inviting me to the 20-something picnic. I was 39. That’s a compliment!

###

Two years after arriving in L.A., someone in “the biz” gifted me a ticket to a screening of a new Johnny Depp movie called The Libertine. All of my friends (i.e. Victor) were working, so I went solo. The man next to me on line was also by himself. I forced myself to start a conversation. “Do you know anything about this movie besides it starring Johnny Depp?” He said blah blah blah and I said yadda yadda yadda and our banter never dipped while we waited to be let in. When I took my seat, he followed me and asked if he could sit with me. “Of course!” I responded. We continued chatting. It was so easy. We stopped our discussion during the movie (which in retrospect was a mistake, as the movie, a poorly lit slog about a syphilitic playwright, was terrible). After the movie there was a Q&A session with Depp. I asked him what his dream role would be, and he answered he’d love to portray Carol Channing. (Still waiting for that.) We left the theater together (not me and Johnny, but me and the man I met on line). It turns out we parked in the same garage a block over, so we walked there together and continued our chit-chat. “I can picture Johnny Depp with a blonde shoulder-length bob.” “I hope Tim Burton directs that movie!” We arrived at my car first. I told him how great it was to meet him and suggested we hang out again. I asked him for his phone number. That’s when he Jesse Owens’d to his car one level up.

But still, I kept trying.

###

In New York I’d fed my love of writing at The New School, five blocks from my apartment. Every class I took there was nourishing, and whoever named the university “The New School” would have done well to audit any of them and learn how to be creative. (If the school was named after its founders, say Sherman and Mildred New, I apologize for my flip comment.) In Los Angeles, I found a writers group less than two miles from my home, and usually I made it there in under an hour. Not only was the workshop a place to exercise my creative muscles; it was where I might meet others for whom working out was a cerebral activity. The group was run by a native Angeleno named Nicole—cheery, around my age, dark hair down to her neck. Each session started with an exercise: Nicole would give us a prompt and for 20 to 30 minutes we’d write something based on that prompt. Then we’d share our prose with the group, who’d give feedback, the greatest praise being “that’s a typer-upper!” Often I’d hang out after workshop finished and Nicole and I would chat. Beyond the helpful feedback she gave me during the sessions, I enjoyed her company. She was smart, creative and unpretentious, plus we were both Prince fans, which in my book counts for a lot. During one of these discussions it came up that she loves to cook; my kitchen was primarily an adjunct record album storage shed. She offered to teach me, and a couple of times we got together at her place for cooking lessons. Then she and I made plans to get together to make dinner at my place one Saturday evening. I moved my records from the kitchen. I mopped. I scrubbed the countertops. I degreased the oven racks. Yes, I would have done that anyway. (No, I wouldn’t.) She didn’t show up. She called me a few hours later. “I’m so sorry! I fell asleep and just woke up. Shall we reschedule for tomorrow night?” As luck and my lack of a social life would have it, I was free that night as well. “It’s a date!” Sunday evening came, but Nicole didn’t. I called her to ask where she was, and she told me she thought the plans were off as I didn’t call to confirm. WE MADE THE PLANS LESS THAN 24 HOURS AGO! Why would I then need to confirm them? Here, does the phrase “See you tomorrow” come with an asterisk to a footnote that reads “Or maybe I won’t. Whatever.” Oh, no, no, Godot. Compare this to New York City, where nobody taught me how to cook—my kitchen was barely big enough to hold a dozen LPs—but you can make plans with someone nine months out and they’ll be at the appointed place at the appointed time, no confirmation needed.

###

Several times, a friend and I would make plans to hang out, but they’d soft cancel the plans. A soft cancel is when one party pulls out of plans without telling the other, as opposed to a hard cancel, which is what the world outside Los Angeles simply calls a cancel. With a soft cancel, you’re left waiting—at a restaurant, on your sofa, in your wedding dress—until the clock strikes half past they’re-not-coming. Later (the next day or in a couple of weeks or on Yom Kippur), the canceller explains that “something better came along.” I’ll admit there may exist things that are better than hanging out with me—cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway eating home-baked chocolate chip cookies and singing show tunes with Dolly Parton, or, um, hmmm. That’s the whole list, really. I was on the receiving end of a soft cancel from my “friend” Scott, who I met in Nicole’s writers group (not to be confused with my other friend Scott who has an outsized fascination with Kim Carnes). I had dinner plans with not-“Bette Davis Eyes”-loving Scott. When he didn’t show up at the designated time, I texted him to see if he was on his way. No reply. I waited another ten minutes, then called him. He answered the phone and quickly hung up without saying anything. The next day he called and explained to me that he got a new phone and couldn’t figure out how to work it. Look, I get it. Answering a phone is challenging. Don’t think you’re all that because when your phone rings you hit the green phone icon on your mobile device’s screen and speak. Not everybody is a member of MENSA like you are, smartypants. Oooh, look at Miss Thing! Able to answer a call like it’s nothing! What a genius! Give her a FIFA Phone Prize! For some, answering a phone is like trying to squeeze into your mouth simultaneously a tennis ball, a running lawnmower, and President McKinley. Scott (from the writers group, not the Scott one who knows that Kim Carnes had ten US top 40 singles besides “Bette Davis Eyes”) said he’d make it up to me by taking me out to dinner the coming Wednesday. And give him a tiara and a bouquet, for he showed up at The Flaming Skillet at the agreed upon time. When the bill came he suggested we split it. Give me back that tiara and bouquet. Asshole.

###

I met Stella when she attended an improv workshop I was part of. She was funny and gave off a no-nonsense energy that drew me in, so I introduced myself at the end of her first session. “I know you from somewhere” she said. “Did you live in New York?” “Yes,” I answered. “You were a standup comic, right?” “Yes again.” “I saw you perform! You had that hilarious routine about the song ‘Gloria’!” ‘Tis true. One of my routines was about how loud Laura Branigan sang her signature hit, how it’s not that there isn’t anybody calling; it’s that Gloria can’t hear the phone ringing over Laura Branigan’s singing. How ‘bout her remembering my routine from years prior and praising it!?! She also did standup, which I stopped performing a couple of years before I left NYC, just after the 9/11 attacks, when getting on stage to talk about Laura Branigan seemed inappropriate. Naturally, I took to her right away. And she’s a fellow New Yorker – hurrah! She won’t flake. She was based in L.A. now, in a house up a hill off Laurel Canyon. I visited a few times. The narrow winding streets gave me panic attacks, but that’s a sacrifice I’d gladly make to hang with a pal. I went to the theater and enjoyed her one-person show based on her life. The last time I saw her was at West Hollywood’s now-closed Big Gay Starbucks, when she said “I’ll call you this week and we’ll make plans.” The phone still hasn’t rung, or maybe I haven’t heard it over Laura Branigan’s singing.

###

I hate going to the doctor. It’s not that I’m afraid they’re going to look at my elbow and tell me I have inoperable brain cancer. It’s that 20+ years on in this town, I still have no idea who to enter as my emergency contact when filling out new patient forms, which is like being in one’s 40s and not knowing how to cook. My nominees for Best Emergency Contact (my sister, my stepmom, my friend Laura) all are 3000+ miles away. What good’ll they do me when the doctor calls with the brain cancer news? For now, I postpone important medical procedures, as the patient is required to have a ride to and from the hospital (not a rideshare or taxi or one’s self) and I’m not close enough with anyone to ask them to sacrifice like that for me. Whatever I have, maybe it’ll go away.

(I feel it’s important to note that Scott—the one who follows Kim Carnes and her son on Facebook—has been my chauffer to a couple of MRI’s, but I don’t want to take advantage of his kindness, plus relying solely on him makes it sound like I don’t have any other friends, which I do. Not.)

###

Early in my residence here I had a visitor from the east coast stay with me for a few days. He arrived by mail. Flat Stanley is a paper cutout who goes on adventures. My niece in the third grade wanted him to have a Hollywood experience. My role was to take Flat Stanley out for a day in the city, photographing all the fun things we did, and then send Flat Stanley and our photos back to my niece for a show-and-tell at class.

It was a beautiful day for a sightseeing adventure. The convertible top of my car was down. I took pictures of Stanley in the passenger seat with the seatbelt strapping him in. I finally made my first trip to Griffith Park and I held up my homeboy Stan with the HOLLYWOOD sign behind him. We went to the Chinese Theater where F-Stan put his hand in famous handprints and posed outside the theater with any number of Captain Jack Sparrows and Spongebob Squarepantses. Then I had to mail Stan My Man back to my seven-year-old niece. Is it weird to miss him? Can I just make another Flat Stanley and if anybody asks, I’ll say it’s for another niece? Am I a Stan stan? Am I pathetic?

###

Ten years after relocating to la la land, Warner laid me off. A subsequent consulting client cheated me out of tens of thousands of dollars; the CFO had decided we were friends—I’d spent considerable time with him, even driving him to urgent care once after a business dinner served him complications—and in his view, friends don’t stop working for other friends just because they haven’t been paid their contractually-due consulting fees for several months. Wrong ‘em, boyo. Book some time with Dionne Warwick, ’cause that’s not what friends are for. I found myself in therapy again—Therapist #13—telling him I wanted to live alone somewhere I wouldn’t have to see any others. People who cheat you, take advantage of you, are unkind, disrespectful, self-absorbed and inconsiderate. You know—people. “How would that help your feelings of isolation?” he asked. “It won’t,” I said, “but I already feel isolated, so I may as well be isolated.” It’s not that I’m misanthropic. Misanthropes hate humanity. I hate humans as individuals (except you, the one reading this. You’re the cat’s pajamas, the bee’s knees and the ferret’s suspenders. May I put you down as my emergency contact? Please?).

Why set myself up for more disappointment and rejection? Better to stay in with my dogs and my records and my books and my subscription to HBO Max (or whatever they’re calling themselves at the time this essay is published).

I knew the healthy thing to do was to keep trying. To put myself out there. Making friends is a numbers game. Studies show that even a couple of quality friendships measurably extend your life. Many more years of this.

I decided to be unhealthy. I don’t know if I need permission to quote from a movie and I’m too lazy to find out, so let me rephrase the words of Danny Glover as Sgt. Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon: for this shit too old I’m getting.

Even if someone appears to make overtures for a friendship with me these days, I keep my distance, lest I be left standing all alone yet again.

###

In 1993, just before the release of her album Debut, Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk moved from lifelong hometown Reykjavik to London for work. The work was to put aside her deep shyness and introversion and see how life in a big city may affect her music. The result was the album Post, mostly written post her move to London and as a post to the folks back home, saying “This is how I’m doing.” Her work paid off. The record is so great I sense she found the city’s best donut emporium and treated herself to a Greenwich Cream Time.

The album opens with “Army of Me,” Björk telling someone (me) to stop their (my) bellyaching and set about fixing their (my) situation. You’re on your own. No one is going to save you. Self-sufficience, please. Björk is serving tough love. She’s the Coach Taylor to my Matt Saracen. (At the suggestion of my friend Laura I recently started watching the high school football-centered drama Friday Night Lights.) (I probably shouldn’t include 20-year-old TV references I have to explain.) Björk is my Therapist #14.

Following “Army of Me” is my favorite song on the album, “Hyper-ballad,” about a woman who wakes up early each day, walks to the cliff near her home, and throws off of it things she finds lying around—car parts, bottles, cutlery, sometimes imagining throwing herself off. It’s a perfect party starter, as evidenced by the song going to number one on the Dance chart. This woman’s life and relationship with her partner had lost their zing boom. She has to do something to exorcise her frustrations. In an interview, Björk, assuming the role I assigned her as Therapist #14 (or Coach Taylor, if you prefer out-of-date TV references), offers advice as to how to counter one’s malaise: “You wake up early in the morning and you sneak outside and you do something horrible and destructive, break whatever you can find, watch a horrible film, read a bit of William Burroughs, something really gross and come home and be like, ‘Hi honey, how are you?’” I don’t live near a cliff, so one afternoon while in a deep funk (not the good Chaka Khan kind) I did the most horrible and destructive and gross thing I could think of—I sat down for lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen in Westwood, where I was served something that in NY could only be found in a crafts store.

I sat there alone, rending the grease-saturated, limp slab of cardboard blanketed in laboratory-devised, coagulated pseudo-cheese fat, smothered under a sauce that leaned more toward solid than liquid, and topped with reddish-orange rubber discs that were neither pork-based nor beef-based but rather nuclear waste-based, and I wondered how I ended up here, here being my lonesome life, not CPK, but that, too. What am I doing wrong? I don’t want to have the CPK equivalent of a life. I thought about what Therapist #14 said: Don’t complain. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. What you need to do is set about fixing your situation. Get that negativity out of your system. But how?

###

Put a pin in that for the moment, for I don’t want to leave Post without mentioning three more of my favorite songs on it. There’s “Isobel,” whose titular character grew up alone in a forest and sends moths to the city’s inhabitants as a way to tell them to favor instinct over logic. Isobel/Björk doesn’t tell us how the insects convey this message, but I will—they use Moth Code. Get it? (I’m starting to see why I don’t have any friends.) Favor instinct over logic — four star advice from Therapist #14, unconventionally delivered via moth, as is her wont. Meetup groups, forced conversations with whoever is next to me on line, putting myself out there. Maybe I’ve been overthinking it, as is my wont. Maybe I should follow the moth.

In “I Miss You,” the narrator dreamed up exactly who their perfect companion will be and is sure they will meet them. “I’m so impatient / I can’t stand the wait,” she sings. Nor can I, Björk, but screw my perfect companion (I probably could have phrased that better); I’ll gladly settle for someone to hang out with, who shares some of my interests. The bar is not high. The bar is low. Very low. The bar is so low to the ground the world’s most supple limbo dancer can’t get under it. I continue to wait.

And there’s the album’s only cover song, “It’s Oh So Quiet,” which Smash Hits called “oh so brilliant,” “Bjönkers,“ and “a loonier-than-the-looniest-thing-ever-loonied choon.” A top five single in the UK, it is Björk’s biggest hit. The song opens as a calm, mellow, relaxed acceptance of being alone as a nice, peaceful state, until…until a full orchestra kicks in, Björk belts “You fall in love, zing boom,” soon to be followed by screams of delight. In the song’s video, we have a dancing metallic muffler man, dancing marble columns, and a dancing mailbox, ending with Björk levitating. It’s bjöyous. That’s where I want to live, if not geographically, at least emotionally.

###

One recent day, I turned down invites not received to stay in and delete files from my Google Drive, as Google informs me on the daily I’m reaching my storage limit and if I didn’t make some room I’d be alone forever and not get into heaven. (I’m paraphrasing.) I spent an inordinate amount of time asking Google’s chatbot, Gemini, how to delete from my Google Drive files shared with me by people with whom I am no longer in contact. Gemini kept giving me instructions, none of which worked, until eventually it threw up its virtual arms and sent me the message “You are out of points for today.” End of discussion. How am I supposed to learn how to make friends when even a non-human chatbot has Jesse Owens’d me?

###

Within the last year, both of my dogs passed away. I felt lonesome before; now I am truly alone. I didn’t realize just how much my dogs were my social life. Besides my weekly grocery shopping, I’ve barely left my home since the second one passed. I seldom talk to anybody, outside of a weekly Zoom call for work and a twice-monthly Zoom with my writers group. (This is not Nicole’s writers group, but rather one I‘ve been running since its previous host abandoned it.) Should I stay in L.A.?

I had been thinking I’ll move back east when my dogs pass, but when that came to be so, I was on the fence. I used to go back to Manhattan two or three times per year, but I haven’t been since 2018. On each trip I had one fewer friend left, until it was just Martin, who ignored my calls to get together.  (Martin is to friends what CPK is to pizza.) My favorite hangout spots–Bendix Diner, Tower Records, Mxyplyzyk–closed. (Mxyplyzyk is not something I typed while having a stroke connected to my hypothetical brain cancer, but was a home furnishings/gift shop filled with lots of cute, useful, overpriced this and that.) The Strand is still open, with its cellar filled with reviewer copies of books at half-price, though it filled me with anxiety on my most recent trip there, thanks to my fairly new fear of basements, an offshoot of my fairly new claustrophobia. You think my latest therapist (Therapist #15? 16? I’ve lost count.) wants to solely hear about my loneliness week in week out? I have plenty more sources of distress, agitation and ick with which to keep him entertained. Which brings me to…

New York City has cockroaches that are roughly the size of your average third grader and rats so huge that as they scurry along the subway tracks they’re often mistaken for the E train. And before you get all smug, City of Angels, I have seen, on my street, coyotes and bobcats. They’re not gross like cockroaches and rats, but they are topics of conversation with Therapist #17. That’s the trade-off. Cockroaches and rats vs. coyotes and bobcats. Terrorist attacks and blizzards vs. fires and earthquakes. Friends having moved vs. flakes and soft cancellers. You say “So, you’ll go back to your beloved New York and make new friends.” Have you been paying attention? I am to making friends what Diane Warren is to the Academy Award for Best Original Song. (See, she’s been nominated for that award 17 times yet she’s never won.) (It loses something when I have to explain an analogy.) (Still, though, 17 nominations and no wins! Ouch!) (Anyway….)

I already had a friend in L.A. when I moved here. Victor. Remember Victor? We made plans to get together one New Year’s Eve. He had suggested an outdoor dance party, but when December 31 rolled around it was cold and raining. I left Victor a voicemail suggesting we find another place to celebrate. I didn’t hear back from him until 11:30 PM. He called from the field where the party was to tell me he’s there. I crossed him off my friends list and went to bed.

I look at my attempts to make friends in L.A. They blow me off. They run from me. They soft cancel our plans. They want to ring in the new year with a case of pneumonia.

But there are two constants in my failed friendships: L.A., and me. Am I using L.A. as an excuse when the problem is me? That possibility is why I‘m skeptical about making new friends in New York. That’s why I brought up the Diane Warren analogy, though I’m loathe to mention her again as my intuition tells me you’re still unsettled that I referenced her in the first place. I don’t want you to Jesse Owens me when I’m so close to wrapping up this essay, plus I’m still in need of an emergency contact.

###

After sharing an essay in her workshop, Nicole told me it was great until the end. I didn’t resolve the conflict I set up in the story. That’s because there was no resolution. Not every story has one. And here I sit.

###

I read about an exhibition of the work of artist Shepard Fairey at a gallery not too far from where I live. I hadn’t gone to a museum or gallery since before the pandemic, specifically some 14 years before the pandemic, when I was visiting Australia. Initially I thought of attending alone, but then I figure I’d invite someone to join me. I’m going anyway, so if they blow me off, it’ll hurt but not so much as I expect it to happen because L.A. Mainly I’m going to dig the art. I reached out to Ronnie in my writers group. She said yes.

The temperature on that January day was 68 degrees. I elected to walk the two miles to get there. The sidewalks, as usual, were not crowded. Traffic on the street was pretty light. I heard no honking, but then again, I was wearing my noise-canceling headphones with my iPod Shuffle, blasting my ears with  Gladys Knight & The Pips, Joan Jett, Young MC, and “Texas Has a Whorehouse In It” from the Broadway cast album of Annie The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas. The sky was blue, there was no wind, and, thankfully, I didn’t cross paths with coyotes or bobcats. There was the fear Ronnie wouldn’t show up, not because of Ronnie being Ronnie. She’s great. I trusted her. But then again, I trusted Nicole. And Stella, And Scott (the Scott who finds answering the telephone to be a challenge on a par with scaling Mount Everest without the use of boots, ropes or arms, as opposed to the always reliable other Scott, the one who knows that Kim Carnes’ nine-week run at #1 with “Bette Davis Eyes” was interrupted for one week by Stars On 45). Ronnie showed up. A little late, but not half past she’s-not-coming. The art was powerful and inspiring. Afterwards we walked a few blocks and found a café where we hung out and chatted as I nibbled on a very tasty chocolate chip cookie, which I washed down with a hot cocoa. (It was winter.) It was an enjoyable afternoon. Not zing boom, but the limbo stick has been raised.

I’d worn one of my many impressive pairs of sneakers, which were designed more for attention and admiration than for walking two miles, so Ronnie and I shared an Uber to our respective homes. Our driver attempted conversation, awkwardly. I know that feeling. When with someone more socially inept than I, I feel the need to put them at ease, and so I engaged our driver in a one-way conversation on the subject of Jermaine Jackson. This was not the first time I discussed Jermaine Jackson with an Uber driver; it also happened on the way home from a drag show with Scott (you know which Scott). For the record, both drivers were fascinated.

I renewed my lease for another year.

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Tunes Du Jour Presents Broadway Highlights

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There’s no shortage of lists claiming to rank the greatest songs in Broadway history — but this isn’t one of them. Think of this playlist as more of a starter pack: thirty memorable performances from original Broadway cast albums, ranging from the golden age to the present day. You’ll hear songs that helped define the genre, alongside a few that deserve to be better known. Together, they offer a taste of what makes Broadway so irresistible — its mix of humor and heartbreak, spectacle and intimacy, old-school glamour and modern wit.

The opening track, “Hello!” from The Book of Mormon, felt like the right way to fling open the curtain. From there, the playlist hops through time and tone: the romantic sweep of South Pacific and Camelot, the biting modernity of Avenue Q and Hamilton, the pure joy of Annie and Bye Bye Birdie, and the emotional fireworks of Dreamgirls and Company. These songs were chosen less for their chart positions or critical acclaim than for the way they make you feel something — whether that’s laughter, goosebumps, or the urge to belt along.

Because this isn’t a comprehensive history lesson, there are many classics missing — and that’s part of the fun. Consider it an invitation to explore further: if you’re drawn to the lush melodies of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the edge of Sondheim, or the showstopping belt of Jennifer Holliday, Broadway’s got plenty more where this came from. For now, just hit play and let the overture begin.

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#72: Radiohead – OK Computer

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Throughout the next however many months I’ll be counting down my 100 favorite albums, because why not. I’m up to number seventy-two.

When I was a senior in high school, I auditioned for Carnegie Mellon University’s Theater program with what in retrospect looked like a performance on The Gong Show – that 1970s television talent show hosted by a man who claimed to have been a CIA assassin where celebrities would strike a large gong to end particularly unbearable amateur performances. “Juicy” Jaye P. Morgan and Jamie Farr would have reached for that gong mallet to ensure someone destroyed my boyhood dreams and taught me the cold hard fact that life is not for the sensitive or the marginally talented.

I Laurence Oliviered a monologue from a source I no longer recall, and at my mother’s suggestion, I introduced a rubber rat as a prop for my musical selection: Michael Jackson’s “Ben.” Yes, a song about a rat, from a movie about a rat, performed to a black rubber rat the length of the bowel movement that my younger sister gifted to the world when she was four years old that so impressed our babysitter Molly that she called my parents, who were on vacation in Hong Kong, to describe it with more details than a typical Tinder profile, ruler still in hand. Thankfully, this was in the pre-camera phone days, lest a pic of a four-year-old’s discharge get mixed in the slideshow of Hong Kong vacation highlights that were shown to my parents’ friends. “Is that a vermin native to China?” they’d ask. “No, it’s my daughter’s feculence,” my dad would reply, using a more coarse term for feculence. The neighbor, Mr. Brown, would nod the way one does when admiring a masterpiece. “Nice work. Have you thought of entering her in a competition?” Anyway, it had teeth and a tail that was just as long. The rat, that is, not my sister’s business. I thought the inclusion of a rubber rat was a good idea, having seen the comedian Gallagher on television and how he won over audiences with his props, particularly the enduring bit where he took a large mallet to a watermelon and baptized the front row of his audience with sweet, sticky melon juice. In just a few minutes I had to face the horrible reality that I was no Gallagher, a feeling that crushed me like the aforementioned melon.

The confidence with which I entered the audition room left me halfway through the song’s second verse, when one of the judges interrupted with the weary resignation of someone who had seen too many rubber-rat-assisted performances that day, beginning with the kind of sigh usually reserved for terminal diagnosis deliveries. “I don’t suppose anything extraordinary is going to happen in the next two minutes?”

Nothing extraordinary happened. There’s a reason that guy gets to decide who can be in show business and who can’t. He knows his stuff.

I got accepted to attend Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon; just not in their Theater department. In their Anything But Our Theater department. It was like being invited to a party but told to stay in the kitchen. My academics were marvy. My application essay was cool beans. However, my acting and singing were not at the level of an Andrea McArdle (the original Annie in the Broadway musical Annie) or Little Jimmy Osmond (of THE Osmonds, who at age nine had a hit on both sides of the Atlantic with a song that opened with “I’ll be your long haired lover from Liverpool” which is a weird thing for a nine-year-old from Utah to sing). My second choice school, Brandeis University, located in a suburb outside of Boston, didn’t have an audition requirement. I sang to the rat “Ben, something something, something air / You feel you’re not wanted anywhere.” And now, the rat sang to me “Glenn, that Pittsburgh school can kiss your ass / You will learn your trade in Waltham, Mass.” (That’s a joke, folks! I know that rubber rats don’t sing. Unlike real rats, who can belt out an aria that will bring tears to your eyes.) (That’s also a joke. A silly joke. I’m sorry about this run of silliness.)

It didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t cut out for theater – not because I lacked talent (though there was that), but because I lacked the backbone to face rejection after disheartening rejection. Getting turned down by Carnegie Mellon’s Theater Department was the determinative tenon in the sarcophagus. They wouldn’t take $50k from me (well, my parents) because they thought if word got out they’d trained me, their reputation would vanish faster than Lipps, Inc.’s recording career, and they’d end up as one of those sad stories – a once-prestigious university reduced to offering interpretive dance classes in an abandoned Woolworth’s. If they wouldn’t even let me pay to embarrass myself on their stage, community theater wasn’t exactly going to be breaking down my door with offers for me to play the title roles in King Lear or Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Having breezed through a high school computer programming course, I switched my major to Computer Science. Over my four years in college, what started as neat, logical statements like “If X then Y” evolved into increasingly hostile computer languages that made as much sense to me as The Sound of Music winning the Oscar for Best Picture, which is to say, huh? (Extraneous, more so than usual, story: In mid-November 2000, when the US presidential election between Democratic candidate Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush remained undecided due to a contested Florida vote count, I attended a screening of The Sound of Music in Greenwich Village, New York. During the scene where the Von Trapp family wins a singing competition at the Salzburg Festival, someone in the movie theater shouted “I demand a recount!” I♥NY! I should have gotten that guy’s phone number.) Even as I pursued the degree, my heart wasn’t in it. Upon graduation, I halfheartedly applied for programming jobs while pursuing my true passion: positions at record companies. Most computer-related positions were in Defense, and as a pacifist, that wasn’t my path.  Cue my dad saying “Well, somebody’s gotta do it!” Sure, Dad, but should it be the guy who thought “What if I sing TO the rubber rat instead of just holding it?” More importantly, such a job would indubitably crush my soul.

Thanks to a summer temp job in Accounts Receivable at a furniture leasing company, I landed a similar position at CBS Records. When I told my mother I got the job, she responded with an enthusiastic and supportive “I guess you can do that while you keep looking for a computer-related job.” Because obviously, working at a record company was just a stepping stone to the real dream of playing a small part in the destruction of foreign lands. The subtext was clear: the CBS gig was less a career starter and more a temporary detour on the highway to Serious Professional Accomplishment. The way she said this was similar in tone to ten years earlier when she yelled from her bedroom “Glenn, what are you doing?” when I was clearly working on my Carol Channing impression. It wasn’t THAT bad! She knew full well what I was doing. Another dream dashed. #GoodbyeDolly

The only happy memory I have of prior to then was of that singular moment in second grade when Mrs. Halpern praised my essay on prison reform. While my peers were presumably writing about dinosaurs or Scooby Doo or spaghetti, I was crafting a treatise on human decency. I wrote about how the conditions of jail cells were deplorable and no place for actual rehabilitation to take place and about treating inmates humanely, arguing that everyone deserves dignity – a perspective that, looking back, seems remarkably developed for a seven-year-old and certainly didn’t come from my family or the evening news.

My personal experiences and observations made me perceive the world as uncaring if not downright cruel. I found something to care about when I was ten years old. Grandpa Abe regifted me the radio given to him by the bank as his reward for opening a new account with them (a common practice in the 1970s, when banks wooed new customers with treasures like radios and bathroom scales and electric blankets and belt buckles emblazoned with “Wells Fargo”). The radio was a brown box, roughly the dimensions of five stacked rubber rats (minus their tails), with the AM and FM band displays at the top and a fabric-covered speaker comprising its lower two-thirds. Two plastic knobs protruded from its right side like a minimalist Mr. Potato Head design – one volume ear and one tuning nose, as if Picasso had designed it exclusively for Wells Fargo after they informed him his checking account had fallen below the minimum balance requirement. I’m fairly certain that in handing over to me this free no-frills appliance, my grandpa wasn’t aware that he was passing along my primary emotional survival kit, though from that spring day in 1974 when WABC first crackled through the speaker in my bedroom sanctuary, music became my escape hatch from the perpetual disappointment that was life. I very soon began my record collection and would turn to those records when I needed a companion.

When Albert Wunch dropped me as a friend because I didn’t vote for him for sixth grade student council president (I felt he lacked the leadership skills to unite our class) and lashed out at me with “Where did you get your watch – a junkyard?” (nobody insults their constituents and wins the presidency, Albert!), I took solace in the Diana Ross Greatest Hits album that my parents gave me for Hanukkah, at my request. In my bedroom, with its black wood paneling and golden shag carpet, I carefully removed the album from its sleeve, holding it on its perimeter, and placed it on the record player. I flipped the “on” switch, set the speed to 33, and gently placed the needle on the opening groove. “Touch me in the mo-orning….” I immediately lifted the needle. I have an issue with that song, which is: who laughs at wind? “Wasn’t it yesterday we used to laugh at the wind behind us?” Diana sings in the second verse, as if she and her lover were meteorology enthusiasts who found low-pressure systems hilarious. Next track, please. “Love Hangover” – now that’s a certified banger. Side A concludes with the sublime “Theme From Mahogany.” I flip the record over and BOOM! “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” lifts me up like a melodic brassiere. It filled/fills me with the unshakeable belief that Diana Ross would, indeed, be there in a hurry if I called her name – though I never tested this theory, because some illusions are better left unshattered. (Thirty years later I saw Miss Ross entering the food court at the mall in Century City as I was leaving it. We caught each other’s eyes and she flashed me a huge smile that said “I still mean what I said.”)

Since childhood, shyness was/is my albatross. Much like my Lenovo PC, I have a tendency to freeze at the most inopportune moments, like during what others refer to as “normal human interactions.” Back at school, my obsession with music and the Billboard charts was less a conversation starter and more a classmate repellent. While my peers discussed Little League and Mad magazine and Raquel Welch, I was bursting to share that on the flip side of Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom” was a live cover of The Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” performed with John Lennon – the same Lennon who, on Elton’s previous single, a cover of The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” performed under the pseudonym Dr. Winston O’Boogie! Riveting, right? Yet for some crazy reason these boys on the verge of adolescence preferred discussing Raquel Welch‘s boobies. “Clod-polls!” I thought to myself. Looking back, mentally categorizing peers as simpletons might have contributed to my social isolation, so I must shoulder some of the blame.

Yet, amidst my inadvertent self-imposed musical exile, Nicole Winston actually tried to connect with me through my love of music. In eighth grade told me of a song she thought I’d love by Seals & Crofts, a long-haired, bearded soft rock duo that in the 1970s conferred on an unsuspecting public such wussy hits as  “Summer Breeze” and “Diamond Girl” and “Hummingbird.” Having me to listen to their music should be punishable as a hate crime, though Nicole had the best of intentions. She picked up on my sensitivity and non-participation in athletic activities and disinterest in Raquel Welch and assumed I was a flaming mellow music fan. I preferred things that were a bit more rocking, like Eagles, Electric Light Orchestra and Barry Manilow, always throwing up the devil horns hand gesture when I heard “It’s a Miracle” or “Daybreak.” She said the Seals & Crofts song was called “Babe in the Woods” and it was about a deer and as I’m recalling this I’m throwing up in my mouth a little and doing my utmost to keep my building rage from flying out of control and wondering what impression I give off that would impel someone to recommend such a sickening vile song to me when I go wild and headbang to “New Kid in Town.” I didn’t even give the offensive song a listen. The fact that I’ve carried this memory for 45 years, only to discover through an internet search while writing this paragraph that Seals & Crofts never even recorded a song called “Babe in the Woods” or anything about a deer, feels like a perfect metaphor for my less-than-idyllic teenage years. I lost a potential colleague in my musical passions because she didn’t meet my standard of exclusively supporting artists who truly rock. Like Barry Manilow. (Years later, I negotiated deals to have Seals & Crofts’ hits be included on compilation CDs with titles like NOW! That’s What My Dentist Plays: Volume 37. Both men were a pleasure to work with and I forgive them for “Summer Breeze” and “Diamond Girl.” Not “Hummingbird,” though.)

Fast forward a few decades to the rise of social media and adult Glenn still trying to use music to make a connection, hoping the broader reach of this new technology would help with that. I used to post music-related tidbits on Facebook, such as commemorating an artist’s birthday by posting a clip of them, until a fellow writing workshop student, auditioning for the role of Buzz Killington, informed me that nobody cares. “That’s not what Facebook is for!” she scolded. True enough, nobody besides me posted the video of Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait” on the birthday of their lead singer, the unforgettable Valerie Day. What others post generally falls under one of the following categories:

– Documenting their food intake via photographs. I’m not sure why. Is the plan to years from now reminisce? “I’m so glad I posted a pic of the fruit and feta salad I ate at the Heritage Towne Center with whatshisface.  Otherwise, I may have completely forgotten about it. #MistyWatermelonMemories” Or is it to make me jealous because my meals come from a box and are eaten alone?

– Similar to that last one, the wine o’clock news. Every glass, meticulously catalogued like rare butterflies before they’re imbibed. I’m puzzled. Will future historians need to know exactly when Sharyn switched from merlot to pinot grigio?

– Announcing their kid made the honor roll. Yes, be proud! Take little Einstein out for some ice cream. They’re brilliant and I’m thrilled to be leaving the world in their hands, but some perspective here. You know how many kids make the honor roll each year? Around 19 million. You know how many people own a mint condition original Japanese pressing of ABBA’s Super Trouper with an intact obi strip? < 19 million. And yet more people post about the former, conforming to what’s expected of them. Post when your second grader writes an essay about prison reform.

– Wishing a happy birthday to their significant other. Do you not live with this person? Are you no longer on speaking terms? Did you forget their birthday until now? Do you think a no-cost post that reads “Happy birthday to my beloved who is currently sitting next to me and asking me why I’m typing this instead of just saying it out loud” will make up for that? Give them a gift, like a spa vacation or theater tickets or a mint condition original Japanese pressing of ABBA’s Super Trouper with an intact obi strip, you cheap, forgetful offspring-of-a-bitch-and-stud. #GenderNeutralPejorative #StillHeteronormativeThough

– Announcing the death of a relative. I genuinely feel for these people, but is there a more thoughtful and respectful place to honor their memory than between a photo of a breakfast burrito and a video of a cat playing tennis? I had a lump in my throat and a tear forming until I saw Dolly Purrton’s forehand groundstroke. Ha ha! #IsThisFurReal?

– Selfies. And only selfies. A daily documentary of one’s face from slightly different angles. Ain’t ya got a mirror? I give a pass to those with biceps and defined abs. Keep up the good work, boys!

Interestingly, on Instagram I found a very large community of people who post items from their record collections. More interestingly, gay men make up exactly 99.2% of those people. You could say they’re into aural! #SorryNotSorry. And while my Kylie Minogue fervor may not be as strong as theirs, I get the bigger picture.

Many of us who fall outside the mainstream use music to escape a world that ravages us with homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism, misogyny, religious persecution, famine, poverty, war, human rights abuses, weather-related disasters, gun violence, genocide, corruption, human trafficking, terrorism, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. I resist engaging with a world where greed prevails, where doing the right thing is not as important as the profit margin. Yes, I’m looking at you, Lenovo Corporation. My Lenovo is a subpar computer, but it would make a good boyfriend, given how often it goes down on me. #SorryNotSorry2. Worst of all, we live in a world where The Recording Academy gives the Song of the Year Grammy to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” over “Fast Car.” Okay, maybe that isn’t worse than genocide, but it’s damn close. Okay, maybe it isn’t damn close, but it still pisses me off.

Unfortunately, the escape music provides me lasts only as long as I’m listening. It doesn’t permanently alter reality. Listening to a stack of Ray Charles records doesn’t change the results of the 2024 US presidential election, where a majority of the voters said “I WANT A CONVICTED RAPIST WHO STOLE DONATIONS MADE TO A CANCER CHARITY TO RUN THE COUNTRY! HE SHARES MY VALUES!” No record would fix that, though a great one can make me feel like I’m not alone in my revulsion of the state of affairs, that somewhere out there are people who share my values and my interests.

Radiohead’s OK Computer is one such album. It captures the disconnect of a society where technology, meant to connect us, often leaves us feeling isolated (see “Facebook, Glenn’s posts on”). The themes of detachment, corporate dreariness, and seeking escape reflect my own journey, from spending my school days feeling like a porcupine at a massage parlor to discovering release through music. Released in 1997, its observations on modern life may strike a more profound chord today. To me, it’s as if Radiohead hopped on a TMZ double decker bus to take a guided tour of my brain: they entered through my prefrontal cortex, where a robotic voice not too dissimilar to the one in Styx’s “Mr. Roboto” instructed them to please power off their devices (Am I the first to mention Radiohead and Styx in the same sentence? Is “Mr. Roboto” now playing in your brain as it constantly plays in mine? Domo arigato.); wandered through my hippocampus, covered in posters of Olivia Newton-John and bearing the strong scent of York Peppermint Patties, making it far more enchanting than the sterile computer labs of the Brandeis campus; stopped at my temporal lobe, where they found a confused mess of career expectations colliding with artistic dreams – an unholy mix of model rockets, a briefcase, and more posters of Olivia Newton-John; paused for a quick lunch at Ye Olde Hypothalamus Café, where they devoured a microwaved mac-and-cheese that, ignoring Mr. Roboto’s instructions, they photographed and posted on Facebook (being British, they had never tasted something so flavorful and exotic); and finally reached my amygdala, where they discovered enough alienation and technological dread to inspire the OK Computer album and its deluxe expanded version, released twenty years later. I should sue.

The narrator of the song “Paranoid Android,” who is disgusted by the lack of empathy and humanity around him? That sounds so much like yours truly that I think I’ll add that title to my email signature: “Yours in revulsion, Glenn Schwartz, Writer/Licensing Consultant/Paranoid Android/Record Collector/Owner Of Many Olivia Newton-John Posters.” At the risk of sounding callous, I simply cannot put myself in the shoes of someone who lacks empathy.

The protagonist of “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” who, feeling out of place in this world, dreams of an alien abduction, hoping they’ll take him aboard their ship and “show me the world as I’d love to see it?” That is so me, except for the part about wanting to be abducted and taken aboard a spaceship, as with my luck I’ll be stuck in the middle seat between a guy who removed his shoes and socks before takeoff (that’s not what “takeoff” means, you jackal!) and someone who gives me a play-by-play of her Aunt Tillie’s gall bladder surgery during the safety demonstration, causing me to miss the instructions about the quantum-lock seatbelts and anti-gravity emergency procedures and how to operate the fifth-dimensional oxygen mask. All I heard was “smoking of any substance, including Zorpian plasma-vapor, is strictly prohibited.” Hard to believe that was ever allowed. This is not the world as I’d love to see it! Flight attendant, is it too late to get bumped up to Business Class? It is? Now Tillie’s niece is telling me how rude I am. “You could be a little cordial, as we’re going to be stuck next to each other for the next 6000 hours! Anyway, when they cut Aunt Tillie open, it was like popping a zit the size of a grapefruit. All this chunky yellow gunk oozed out. Is there food on this flight?” #ISuckAtMakingFriends

Then there’s “Exit Music (For A Film),” written for the closing credits of Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet. Do I relate to the star-crossed loverboy’s point of view as he plans his escape from an oppressive society? Does a polar bear shit on an ice floe?

I very much identify with the narrator of “Let Down,” who finds life monotonous, disappointing, and, well, a letdown. I was let down by the judges at my college theater audition, let down by the lack of support when I landed my dream music business job, and, of course, let down by Lenovo, who, once they have your money, treat you like a rubber rat prop – something that has served its purpose and now can be ignored and dismissed.

The protagonist of “Karma Police” requests that the titular law enforcement “arrest this girl; her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill.” Imagine if karma police actually existed, rounding up those who make others’ lives miserable – offenders with appalling hair choices, barefoot airline passengers, billionaire social media overlords who wouldn’t know empathy if it sent them a friend request, the current administration, Lenovo executives, and the jackals ensuring Seals & Crofts’ continued relevance through compilation licenses (though I suppose that last offense only warrants a warning).

On “Fitter, Happier,” a robot that sounds markedly different than the one in “Mr. Roboto” dictates the proper way for humans to live: drinking in moderation, hitting the gym three days a week (Glenn: ha!), no microwave dinners (Glenn: ha ha!), no saturated fats (Glenn: ha ha ha! This machine’s a real Gallagher!). Thom Yorke, Radiohead’s lead singer/chief lyricist, called “Fitter, Happier” “the most upsetting thing I’ve ever written,” which proves he’s never had to write to Lenovo’s customer service about a computer that is such a colossal piece of crap that my former babysitter Molly took pictures of it to send to my parents.

My favorite song on OK Computer and indeed my favorite song in the Radiohead oeuvre is “No Surprises,” a suicide note disguised as a children’s lullaby. The narrator, trapped in an unfulfilling life, speaks of “a job that slowly kills you” and “bruises that won’t heal.” He looks in the mirror and sees someone tired and unhappy. He questions why a democratic government serves only the privileged few. All he wants is “no alarms and no surprises,” letting us know that “this is my final fit, my final bellyache.” The song poses a question I think about more often than I’d like: when does merely existing become too heavy a burden to bear? The real power of “No Surprises” is how it makes me feel less alone in asking that question. There are others like me out there; I just have to find them, with or without the help of technology. I hate to think about what might have been had I pursued one of those Defense jobs. #NotEveryParagraphHasAPunchLine

Closing OK Computer is “The Tourist,” a song about taking the time to enjoy life in a world moving too fast. “Idiot, slow down, slow down” implores Thom Yorke. Great advice, lest I become like my Lenovo pc, teetering on the verge of a complete breakdown at any given moment, though unlike my less than ok computer, I know where to find my reset button: my record collection.

OK Computer bridged my abandoned computer science path with my innate sensitivity to human suffering, easing my loneliness by demonstrating that someone else viewed the world similarly, questioned where we were heading, and felt the tension between society’s expectations and remaining true to one’s self. In its tales of darkness, I found light; in its characters’ despair, I found hope; in between my couch cushions, I found 27 cents, which I took to my local independent record store and put toward the purchase of some new vinyl because, unlike Amazon, this store still accepts loose change and its clerks engage in actual conversation with fellow music enthusiasts. This is what Radiohead had been telling us all along: no algorithm can replace the joy of genuine human connection. The relevance of this message has only grown stronger over time.

The music that accompanies the lyrics reflects the idea that one needn’t conform. The spirit of experimentation on the record – distorted vocals, shifting time signatures, computerized voices, abrupt structural shifts, layers of electronic samples – breaks free of the boundaries of what a rock band is supposed to sound like. The band and their producer, Nigel Godrich, revel in the sonic possibilities of modern technology, while singer Yorke expresses an opposition to technology’s potential social, moral, and psychological impact. I’d wager TWICE the amount of money I found in my couch cushions that right now your brain is invoking the philosophical precepts of poet and teacher Eli Siegel, who posited that the quintessence of art lies in the dialectical synthesis of opposing forces, and therefore, one might assert that OK Computer achieves an exalted aesthetic status, wherein dissonance and melody, fragmentation and cohesion, despair and transcendence—even a vocalist decrying technology while enmeshed in its sonic landscape—coalesce into an indelible auditory manifestation of artistic profundity. To take this idea further, the preceding sentence is simultaneously terrible and meaningful, which means it is art, as art contains opposing elements, unless it is meaningfully terrible, in which case it transcends art entirely and becomes a Seals & Crofts song. I trust you’re following this logic, for this will be on the final exam.

That the album sounded like nothing else on the radio, nor like Radiohead’s prior album, The Bends, or “Creep,” the breakthrough hit off the band’s first album, caused concern at their record label. Deeming the album uncommercial and difficult to market, the band’s record label reduced their sales estimates. Much like the 21-year-old who defied what was expected of him and began a long and fruitful career in the music industry, Radiohead defied the doubters about their third album’s commercial appeal. OK Computer became the band’s biggest success, topping the UK Albums Chart and selling over 7.8 million copies worldwide. It won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, was nominated for Album of the Year, and has repeatedly been recognized in polls of music critics as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2014, the US Library of Congress inducted it into the National Recording Registry for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance. Most significantly, The Sixth Sense actor Haley Joel Osment loves it.

The suits at Radiohead’s record label were like the judge at my Carnegie Mellon audition who said to me “I don’t suppose anything extraordinary is going to happen in the next two minutes.” Just because someone’s in a certain role doesn’t mean they know greatness when they see or hear it. Their goal is to keep the status quo. That needn’t be your goal. They can’t tell you what you can or cannot do. Live your life. Live it with integrity. And if those gatekeepers block you, tell the karma police to arrest them.

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