Steve Alpert

"Fontessa" 48"x60" oil painting by Steve Alpert

        Alone, alone all, all alone on a wide wide sea.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote these words, this little phrase has hummed along in my head since I first heard them in high school English class.  I’m fascinated with the concept of being alone.  Alone is how all the great the thoughts come about, alone is how I regenerate the creative energies.  My stepson Matt asked the other day, “What was a time in your life when you were really alone?”             

     My first thought was when I hitchhiked across America, summer of ’72.  Had a ride from New York to Boulder, then took off on I-25 South.  That first night I wound up at a state park in northern New Mexico.  Rented a campsite for two bucks. The place was empty.  I made a fire, which helped a little.  It was the very first night of a six-week 5,000-mile journey.  I sat there looking at the huge expanse of territory in front of me.  Two miles of flatlands rushing toward a very tall dark mountain looming into the deepening evening.  Fighting off the loneliness as it crowded me as it got dark.  That was alone.  Suddenly headlights appeared and two college guys in a car showed up.  And well… the party was on.  For days.  But that’s another story.                

     But then I said to Matt, no, wait, here’s the time I felt the most alone in my life.  I was amazed how I could pull it up from 54 years back.  I was five.  Christmas Eve.  A perfect gentle snow had been falling all day long.  No wind. By evening the split-level homes and lawns and trees were coated in a thick white.  It was quiet out there in New Rochelle on Norman Road.  But things were heating up inside this house as a fight breaks out between my parents.  It starts as a shouting match and then becomes physical.  My father  shaking my mother by her shoulders and there is loud yelling by both of them.  Two people really unhappy to be together.  My mother threatens to call the police.  My father rips the phone out of the wall.  I’m down on the floor grabbing at their ankles begging them to stop.  Next thing I know, my father breaks from my mother, grabs a coat, heads downstairs to the basement and into the garage.  I scurry to my room, above the garage.  The rumble of the motor turns into the sound of the garage door opening and I watch at the window as the big car with fins moves out of the driveway leaving tracks in the snow.  The car disappears in the night.  That was the most alone I’ve ever felt.  Hadn’t thought of that traumatic scene from my life in years and years but funny thing about scenes like this, when you do remember — it seems like it happened last week.         

      I think only children key into being alone more than kids with siblings.  My stepson Matt is an only child.  As social as Mattie is, and he is very much the social/party animal — like his mother — Matt needs his alone time to recharge.  Me too.  Americans love the lone hero, The Lone Ranger (even though he had Silver and Tonto), Jack Bauer and the solitary and steely Clint Eastwood persona.  Clint may be alone, but he is never lonely.  

     We love Superman, the ultimate loner who fights for “…Freedom, Justice and the American Way.”   For you Superman comic book enthusiasts, you’ll remember that Superman had a place to go to get away from it all — of course old Supe was not exactly human, he was from the planet Krypton, a Kyrptonian.  To get away from snot- nosed Jimmy Olson, Perry (And Don’t Call Me Boss) White and Lois Lane, Lana Lang and all the other LL girls Superman needed a place to able to think, to be quiet.  So, he’d fly up north where he built his, what else?  His Fortress of Solitude.  Brilliant!  For a guy who could leap from tall buildings, faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive, and be involved with date several women with the initials LL, he really needed to get away from it all.  Far as we could tell there was not much going on up there in Superman’s palace of ice. 

     I can’t leap from tall buildings, can only fly on commercial jets, although I did marry a girl with the letters, DD…my little painting studio is my Fortress of Solitude.  In the studio I take those moments in my life that made the strong impressions.   I was very involved in athletics all through my childhood, which were safe and enriching places for me to be – in the gyms and on the fields.  My childhood was quite good actually despite that one horrific scene as described.  As a young man learned to appreciate the serenity of nature, which now I can take into the paintings for me and others to enjoy.  Art has given me the outlet I found when I realized that the 100 yard dash was not going to offer me much of a working career. Lucky to have found it, fortunate enough to have been given the support and encouragement by wife to make the leap, ten years ago.   So, as I seek and even sometimes achieve sublime serenity, I may be alone in the studio working away, but never lonely.

"Sandstorm" 12"x16" oil painting by Steve Alpert

Veterans Day, 2008.  I was on a Washington DC metro train and a heavy-set man my age, maybe a few years older, sat across from me wearing a Vietnam Veteran cap.   On public transportation there is the unspoken rule of respecting personal space.  This fellow did not seem approachable in his body language.  He was heavy-set in body and demeanor.  And, clearly making a point of wearing his Vietnam Veteran’s cap, on Veteran’s Day.  I had second thoughts of approaching him.  But, I had to do this, maybe more for me than for him.  I stood up and stepped across the moving car and offered my hand out into the space between us and asked, “Did you serve in Vietnam?”  He looked at me blankly and nodded.  He did not take my hand quickly.  My hand was hanging out in the air and this scene caught the attention of a few other passengers.  I felt like I was suspended in mid-air.

      “Thank you for your service, Sir,”  feeling like a child to this man even though he was only a few years older than me.  He slowly took my hand without altering his facial expression, and looked at me with what I felt was neutral disdain.  We held each other’s hand, not tight and not loose and for only a beat, maybe two.   My white hand and his brown hand.  He retracted his hand and turned his eyes away from me.  He was done with this silly little moment, a formality he did not   invite.  Pain and bitterness still lived in this man, I thought.  Whatever went down for him in Nam, between then and now, there was stuff there and he wasn’t talking about it to anybody.  I was projecting all this, of course, who knows if any of it were true.  When he looked at me in the brief moment we were connected in hands, he looked at me with impersonal displeasure as if to say, “Hey, it’s way too late for thank you’s, now.  Where the hell were you?” 

     What I wanted to say when I was holding this man’s hand, a man who served in Vietnam all those years ago and experienced God-only- knows-what, was, “I’m so sorry, man, we messed up big time not thanking all of you guys when you made it home, we should have but didn’t goddammit, thank you from the bottom of my heart, from all our hearts who didn’t know any better, we got caught up in all that Hawk and Dove crap and Nixon, and then Watergate, and everything else at that time and you know, that’s no damn good excuse for forgetting about all of you guys who gave everything you had but we didn’t want you to even be there but you were there and had all that happen to all of you while we were screaming hell no we won’t go with good reason not to go, and then the war was finally over and all you guys came back and we never showed any appreciation for you going and doing what you were asked to do… the whole thing was just so damn wrong… still is.”  I wanted to say all this and more standing right there in front of this man with a Vietnam Veteran cap right there on the Metro who wanted me gone.  I didn’t say any of that other than the bland and sanitized, “Thank you for your service, Sir.”  Other than the perfunctory, “Thank you for your service,” I didn’t say squat.  Too much pain in the man’s eyes and being and too much survivor’s guilt and embarrassment in mine.  So,  I stood awkwardly in the middle of the car, grasping the pole.  At the next stop the man got up and slowly left the train.  A relief for both of us.  Sad, very sad.

    It’s was as if the whole thing were their fault.  The grunts, the guys on the ground.  They didn’t get involved in the politics of it.  As in every war, they fought to stay alive and to keep each other alive.  They, I’m talking the grunts on the ground, the tunnel rats,the guys on the jungle. they weren’t about debating the merits of  the Domino Theory or the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or anything else.  They were just trying to stay alive.  What were they supposed to do disobey orders?  Are you kidding?   We are embarrassed.  Ashamed.  Disgusted.  Makes me sick to my stomach.  

Sorry, friend, there’s no redemption in this little story.  Only something I needed to do.  I hope he took something from it.  I wanted to give him something even after all this time had gone by   So many more like him.  How we treated all our returning vets from Vietnam who served so bravely is a permanent stain on all of us, forever.  Now etched in blood in the history books and in stone at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in DC.  You been there?

Stonehenge

Does the name, Jean Shepherd mean anything to you?  Shep, as he referred to himself, was an American humorist. Shep’s focus was the heartland of America.  He is best known for his now classic Christmas classic tale, A Christmas Story which is now a staple of American Christmas on TV.  I discovered Jean Shepherd in the mid-1960’s when he was on WOR-AM radio in New York City.  Shep did a forty-five minute show from 10:15-11pm every weeknight.  I would listen to Shep with my transistor radio under my pillow.  I looked forward to it every night.  Shep’s radio show was what radio was invented for, I always thought.  He was a spinner of yarns, a penultimate storyteller in writing and in voice.  Shep’s stories were funny, interesting, nostalgic —  mostly centering on his childhood in Hammond, Indiana with his pals, Flick and Bruner.  You might recall a PBS series, Jean Shepherd’s America, hour long episodes that crossed the United States finding his unique brand of story to share with all of us.  I didn’t think the PBS series truly captured Shep’s genius, TV was not his medium, although he did a short lived half hour show on WOR-TV.  He used to do his own commercials live, very funny, although I’m not sure the sponsors thought the commercials were funny and the show went off the air.

Shep invented a certain kind of art form he called, Slob Art.  This would be in the realm of the giant ball of rubber bands sitting on someone’s lawn out in the Midwest, or someone who would create a display of a collection of flattened cans of Bud Lght, or in this case, Carhenge.  You read is correct – Carhenge.  Like Stonehenge, only with cars instead of stone plinths.  I love plinths.

Slob Art is not a bad thing.  It’s Americana, but we’re not talking beautiful quilting or even needlepoint.  I dunno, needlepoint that your follow like paint-by-number might actually be in the realm of Slob Art. 

In the middle of Nebraska, a fellow had an idea, a dream, a vision.  And Carhenge was it.  Click on this and you can share in the result of this vision…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kea7BRu2BjM  and/or,  www.carhenge.com/

Carhenge is a long way from Stonehenge in many ways.  Maybe they should have called in Car-Hinge, but if Stonehenge is the best Nebraska can do in the way of slob-art, I’m there the next time I’m in Nebraska.  I actually saw the most memorable sunset of my life, summer of ‘72 in Ogalalla, Nebraska.  

Be on the lookout for Slob Art.  Slob Art is everywhere.  It’s right up there with fake ice-cream, golf ball collection displays, and giant rubber band balls.  God Bless America!