Month: February 2011

Yes, It Is. Hard to Be

Music marks moments. Hollywood has deftly exploited this fact since its inception. As with literature, the best music speaks to or about conflict and acts as a signifier.

The day my father died I was walking flesh and blood, but hardly alive. Inescapably filled with such tempestuous emotion, I was rendered hollow, a veritable human husk incapable of motion. Everything became very, very still and I was left alone within myself. Everything was beyond the realm of reason, every task beyond comprehension. To book a flight home created luggage to be packed, necessitated friends and colleagues to be notified of pending absences and on and on; the tasks amassed exponentially and my embattled neurons were incapable of making muscles move. Then the news traveled. I answered questions absentmindedly because my mind was frozen, resultant of a voluntary paralysis to salvage my functionality, my sanity much like the catalytic process that shuts down unessential organs to preserve those that are vital. I must be kept vital. To think is to feel. I must not feel this or I’ll be crippled and there are things to be done…

I flew home a fatherless wretch, drenched in isolation and surrounded by people with no knowledge of my loss: a scenario at once comforting and infuriating. Normally terrified of flying thanks to a profound fear of heights, I was at ease in the air for two reasons:  I was ambivalent about dying should the plane free-fall to the ground, and I was listening David Bazan’s newly released Curse Your Branches for the first time. At a time when my nerves had been emotionally soldered, Bazan’s soothing voice and complex lyrics restored a modicum of feeling with their earnest simplicity. Ever relevant regardless of context, the opening track Hard to Be provided refuge for me at a time when it was…well…hard to be a human being.

Four months later, three methods of coping failed, and a switch to waterproof mascara that was a long time in coming, Curse Your Branches remains the soundtrack of my father’s death. Or, to be more specific, the soundtrack to events initiated by his absence, the audio of the void, the soundscape of the sinkhole. Because music marks moments and moments scar music. Their divergence creates a coping mechanism and, eventually, a portal for memories which no longer burn but mollify.

Until that day, burn baby burn.

Robert Allen Meldahl, Obituary of

On October 19th, 2010, Robert Allen Meldahl—noted Southern California Jockey Agent—passed away peacefully in his sleep; he was 61 years young.

Born in Long Beach, California on March 22nd, 1949, Robert Allen Meldahl was a southern California baby-boomer who, after brief residency in Washington D.C. and Washington state, settled in as California’s true native son. A gifted athlete, Bob attended Arcadia High School where he excelled in basketball and baseball, and helped execute such notorious pranks as cementing a Bob’s Big Boy statue into the quad of his alma mater. Upon graduation in 1967, he briefly attended Pasadena City College before moving onto pursuits more aligned with his temperament: salesmanship and softball.

He took a position at Senco Tools in sales and joined the United States Slow Pitch Softball Association (USSSA), with which he traveled the US. In 1976, he was reintroduced to his future wife, Janis, and began a love affair that would last 34 years. After their marriage on October 23rd, 1976, they traveled the country with fellow USSSA cohorts, sharing R-rated high-jinks and cementing deep-seated friendships that would last his whole life.

In 1980, he began his career at the very place he snuck into as a raucous teen—Santa Anita Race Track. From humble beginnings he honed his skills as a shrewd negotiator to become one of the best in the business—representing such gifted riders as Frank Oliveras, Rafael Meza, Corey Black, Patrick Valenzuela, Corey Nakatani, Mike Smith and the legendary Laffit Pincay, Jr. An uncanny judge of character and a passionate devotee to his chosen field, Bob knew people, horses and the track better than any other man in the industry.  He was a mountainous, if not sometimes infamous, figure on the track circuit and his shoes have yet to be filled since his retirement in 2009.

Unfailingly generous, Bob would empty his pockets of his last dime for a friend in need and did so on frequent occasions. He was, above all else, a devoted husband and father who spent many an afternoon relegated to the sidelines of his daughter’s softball games after ejections for arguing with umpires because nobody messed with his daughter.  He could sweet talk a pool shark, shoot hoops with the best of the white-boys, and Lord knows he always knew a guy for whatever needs arose.

His absence will be felt every day, in every way and this world is poorer for its loss. He leaves behind his wife, Janis; his daughter, Nicole; his mother, Betty, and her husband, Manny; his brother, Tony, and two sisters—Kim and Kelly.