The Oppenheimer Report 5/29/16

Today, Shauna and I celebrated our 22^nd wedding anniversary. No big deal, just a quiet dinner at home with the one I love the most in the world. In the blink of an eye, a year has passed since I wrote the song “21” to commemorate our 21^st , a song which our friend Bobby Cameron so beautifully put to music. Most of the cottagers who inhabit our lake in the summer were scared off by the weatherman this weekend, and our little lake was blissfully quiet. What a lovely anniversary gift! A night  in our beautiful log home, alone with my wife, on the silent lake, is about as good as it gets in my book. There is a lone loon calling out on the lake; this year it appears to have no mate.

This time,  twenty-two years ago, Shauna and I were getting ready for our big wedding at the Royal York Hotel, preparing to recite our vows in front of 250+ friends and family from all over the world. We’d been without sleep for days, making the final preparations, but it was all worth it. Shauna and her parents created the most beautiful wedding that I have ever attended, and everything they had planned and arranged for over a year, every detail of that spectacular event, came off without a hitch. The only problem was that it all went by in a flash. Through all the excitement, I was on auto pilot, and much of the night was a hazy memory to me. The image I do have branded indelibly in my memory, is the soft lens image of Shauna in white, looking otherworldly as she walked slowly up the aisle to meet me under the chuppah. I spoke my vows, she spoke hers, and I, the unobservant Jew, spoke a few words of Hebrew that I had struggled to memorize. The ceremony seemed to go by quickly, and then it was time to celebrate. The reception was wonderful. Toronto’s Guido Basso and his big band rocked the house in the Royal York Imperial Room, and inspired even the most dance-challenged out onto the floor. The food was fantastic, everybody danced, drank, and celebrated, and it was the most memorable event that I can hardly remember. I have to watch the video to see what transpired. All the people I knew and greeted, or to whom I was introduced for the first time, are a blur to me now. So many emotions overtook me at the time, fueled by exhilaration and exhaustion, but inside, I felt an uncharacteristic peace. I knew this was right for me, for us. I remember sitting in the Calgary airport the next day, waiting for our luggage, which of course was lost, before we headed off to Banff. I felt a little like I imagine the couple felt at the end of “The Graduate”, driving away on that bus. We were completely uncertain about what the future would hold, but we were hopeful and optimistic.  

                                                                   

In this blog, I’ve written many times about learning to be present, to live in the moment, yet I struggle with this daily. Of late, I have been extremely anxious and distracted. Contentment can be elusive, even when, to outsiders looking in, our life is perfect. My grief over James’ passing took me by surprise, and has really shaken me. His loss has been an unfolding epiphany. Perhaps it is short-lived – it always seems to take me longer than most to learn life’s lessons – but as our life unravels in its usual, chaotic way, and time scatters like leaves in an autumn wind storm, I am learning to accept and feel the pain. Only then can I know and feel joy. It’s the yin and the yang of life, and there is no playbook for this. It sure helps to have a partner with whom I can share the journey. James was many things to many people, and a saint to some. I knew James as a fabulous, complicated, and flawed man. Being around him as much as I was near his end, I saw his imperfections and his vulnerability. It was those very things that endeared him to me. He had so much to offer with his crazy, beautiful mind, and he gave and received so much love. Perhaps he needed to know that someone recognized that about him at the end. Perhaps Shauna and I were what he needed at the time; simple acceptance with no judgment. His marriages failed, but I think he found salvation in the love for and from his little girl. She was, in many ways, his universe.  

I spent the first thirty years of my life anesthetizing myself in various ways, with delusion, with false dreams, with denial; with alcohol. Eventually, we all come face to face with ourselves, whether we want to or not. Not everyone falls in love with the person in the mirror. It is through the people we let into our lives, whom we choose to trust with all our dirty little secrets, our insecurities, our flawed hearts, that we grow to love ourselves and others. These past 22 years have been such a blessing for Shauna and me, and I cannot imagine spending those years with any better partner. She has taught me to love myself, almost as much as she loves me, and for that, I am grateful beyond words.

Final note: one should never play Scrabble without a dictionary, as Shauna and I did on our honeymoon. 

I won that game dear, “digtion” is NOT a word. 

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 5/23/16

One of the things I love about living in a small community so rich in musical talent is that I have the opportunity to watch musicians develop. While there is a lot of reshuffling of band personnel -  I can’t think of one band I know from up here that has all the same members it had three years ago -  the major players are still around. Over the past few years, I have had the good fortune to observe their creativity blossom, and their live performances improve remarkably.

Last Friday night, at the Algonquin Theatre in Huntsville, Shauna and I attended the CD release concert of our dear friend Gina Horswood. Her new CD, Porcelain, was produced by the much-respected and internationally renowned Andre Wahl, and accompanying Gina that night were all the musicians who played on the album. It was an exceptional performance by all involved. As an added bonus, Gina’s sister Melanie flew in from Australia to join her on background vocals and mandolin. Gina and her sister were quite well known in Australia, even charting nationally with several original songs, but while Gina made the decision to continue her musical career in North America, Melanie elected to stay at home and raise a family. There are not all that many Australian artists who go on to become stars in North America, and fame is decidedly elusive for about 99% of all artists who pursue it. I don’t know if Gina will achieve international recognition in North America, but I think she has a shot.

The other day, I listened to a Hunters Bay Radio interview our late friend James Carroll had done with Gina several years ago, and that was, I believe, the very first time he'd ever met her. During the interview, wherein Gina talked and played several songs live, one can almost hear James falling in love with her on-air. Last December, shortly before Christmas, and soon after James had learned he'd developed stage four liver and lung cancer, Gina played one last live performance for him on a Thursday night show called Live Drive. I was in attendance, and James was in charge of the broadcast. After the performance, which I videotaped, James gave Gina a big hug, and the emotion in that hug is indescribable. I’ve never seen Gina give a bad performance, but this one was special.

My first opportunity to meet and talk with Gina in person came after she performed at the Muskoka Sound music festival in the Fall of 2013. She is an intelligent, complicated, interesting young woman, and we hit it off immediately. She’s a double threat, because not only does she have a beautiful, distinctive voice, but she writes powerful songs as well. Her stage presence is completely natural, and she has that undefinable ability to win the audience over with her charm and her wit. Needless to say, both Shauna and I were taken in by her charm from the moment we met her.

Since our first meeting, Gina and I have exchanged song lyrics online, and have met in person several times at our house to play and discuss songs that each of us is writing. Nothing is more satisfying for me than to work with a talented artist like Gina, and I am hoping that one day, she might even cover one of my songs. One night, sitting around our dining room table, I made a recording of her performing a song I wrote, entitled Halfway, as I accompanied her on the guitar. Shortly after the song was over, you could hear Shauna and I audibly sigh with pleasure. It was one of those other-worldly moments, when all the stars align, and the performance was visceral and heartfelt. For me, as a songwriter, it is about as good as it gets to hear a talented artist such as Gina so successfully interpret one of my songs. After the Huntsville concert, she headed south to do a few more concerts in Ontario before heading out west on a national tour of Canada. I think she has a few U.S. dates on the tour as well. I wish I could attend every gig!

Opening for Gina last Friday night was another local friend and talented songwriter, Jamie Clarke, performing with his band Myrle. The last time I saw Jamie perform, he had just put together a new band, and while they hadn’t been together long (it was veteran lead guitarist Brian Hawley’s first gig with the band), it was obvious they were going to be very good. Now, several months later, with some shows under their belts, the band has found its groove, and their improved live show has an added energy which makes them exciting to watch.

  

The music business can tear a strip off you; it’s hard for even the most talented singer/songwriters to make a living performing original music. Anyone who chooses that life certainly doesn’t do it for the glory, or for the money. There's a lot of schlepping equipment to and from smaller gigs, to play to audiences that are less than appreciative, and there is a lot of disappointment.  Still, there are moments like last Friday night, when everything comes together, and  a large audience is receptive and enthusiastic. It’s in those moments, often few and far between, when an artist, struggling to make his or her mark, is motivated to keep growing and developing. In my opinion, overnight success is a myth. I’ve seen five or six artists from this community work hard and improve substantially since I began to follow them. For me, this is more exciting than seeing a big star perform to a stadium full of people.  

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 5/16/16

Today, I said goodbye to my favorite employee at the local dump. She will be retiring this week, and I’m going to miss her. She’s about my age, and over the past ten years or so, she and I have had many a five minute conversation. Relatively speaking, we are strangers, only socializing in this very limited context, and yet I’ve enjoyed our brief interactions. When she wasn’t too busy doing her job, I’d chat with her for a few minutes. She might be working the bailing machine, or in the recycling shed, or checking people’s loads as they entered the dump, or manning one of the many large pieces of heavy equipment used to tame the ever-growing mound of garbage we in the local community generate. In our conversations, we talked about her fishing trips to Northern Ontario, our aging parents – her nonagenarian mom recently passed on – my music, my involvement at the radio station, and whatever else people discuss in brief conversations. I was amused to find out that her favorite television program was The Daily Show, back when Jon Stewart was hosting. I never would have pegged her as a fan of political satire. I probably won’t see her much now that she’s retiring, but so it goes. Change is the only constant.   

When we first moved up here full time, we didn’t know many of the local residents. Building our house turned out to be a full time job, and most of our socializing was done with the various contractors who were working on the house. Now, after eight years of living up here, we are becoming more involved with the local community, and we’ve met a lot of interesting people here from all walks of life. As I became more involved with the musicians in this community, and with Hunters Bay Radio, I came to appreciate the many different kinds of people who make up this community. I don’t know why that should be surprising to me; there are interesting and intelligent people everywhere, but up here, they are not as obvious. Sometimes, I feel as if I am living among the cast of Northern Exposure. People up here may not wear suits, and some of them look pretty rough, but as I learned from my Mom and Dad, never judge a book by its cover. My dad, especially, was mindful of this, and he loved to talk to people from all walks of life. His contention was that everyone was worth getting to know, and from his experience as a real estate salesman, he was fairly adept at sizing people up in a five minute conversation. If someone was boorish or ignorant, or a vexation to the spirit, he figured it out pretty quickly and avoided them. He treated everyone with respect until they proved they were not worthy of it. I cringe sometimes when I hear a summer cottager treat a local resident badly. Many people come up from the city and treat local residents as if they are simply employees, or worse yet, stupid. The locals have an expression for those people: “citiots”. Just as in any community, some of the residents are better than others, but it’s best to learn about a person before you judge.

Whether it’s the plumber who was a banjo player in a great bluegrass band thirty years ago, or the stock boy at the local supermarket who is a gifted artist, or the stone mason who teaches survival training in his spare time, or the many volunteers at the radio station who share a love of community radio, or the lady at the dump who liked to watch Jon Stewart, there are plenty of interesting people up here, and all one needs to do is ask a few questions.

Tomorrow night, I have agreed to play a short set of original music at a local restaurant in Burk’s Falls. I’m not expecting a big turnout, but I need the practice. My performing skills are a little rusty, and about the only venues I play live these days is Hunters Bay Radio and the occasional open stage held monthly at the Burk’s Falls Legion. I’ve spent much of the last four months attending to the needs of my friend James Carroll, and have not been concentrating on my songwriting. Unlike most of the musicians in the area, I don’t love performing my music, but it is customary to perform some of the songs for an upcoming CD release. My album was recorded almost a year ago, but other events in my life took precedence, and the CD was put on the back burner. The songs are mastered, and once the artwork is finalized, hopefully in the not too distant future, I will send it out for duplication and move on to the next project. That’s the plan.

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 5/9/16

I wish all my readers a belated Happy Mother’s Day! I miss mine but I can’t complain. I had my mom for 93 years and, until the very end, she was a fascinating woman. We all have mothers, or had them, but do we really know them as well as we think we do? Of course some people never get to know their mothers at all, and some mothers are not worth knowing. For the rest of us though, we know them as their children know them, but I wonder what their lives were like before they had us. Do we know that person? I came upon a photograph years ago when I was cleaning out my parents’ house to be sold, and it was of my mom and dad shortly after they were married. They both looked a little giddy, with big grins on their faces, maybe even a bit tipsy from alcohol, and Mom is sitting in Dad’s lap. I remember asking Mom about the photo before she died. She’d been through a bad marriage before my father came along, and she was raising two young girls by herself. There is so much to that photo, so much I will never know about my mother.

In many ways, my mom led a charmed life as a child. My grandfather was a community leader in Buffalo, as well as a wealthy, very successful businessman, and owner and CEO of The Wildroot Company, Inc. The Lehman family had a house in Buffalo and a beach house in Fort Erie, Ontario. That is the house I recently sold, and in many ways that house embodies the spirit of my mom. She grew up there, had parties with her friends there; sowed her wild oats there. The family had a chauffeur named Tom, and during Prohibition he used to bootleg liquor across the Peace Bridge in the family car. Mom was technically a smuggler as a young girl, though she probably didn’t know it at the time. I look at photos of parties she had on the Lake Erie shoreline, with all her friends laughing and drinking on the beach, and I think about how three generations of my family did the same thing in the same place. I wonder what she was like back then, before life kicked her around the block a few times.

I can only go by the oral history, and by the photos I see in the old albums, but it seemed as if she had great love and happiness in her life as a young lady. Later, after she attended junior college, she moved to New York City and worked as an illustrator for the fashion industry. I’ve seen some of that art and she had talent. She supported herself and lived the life of a swinging single in one of the world’s most exciting cities, but eventually, she gave all that up to marry the wrong guy. She had two girls with that man, and when she divorced him there was a nasty custody battle. Not too long afterwards, she married my dad, who was five or six years her senior, and a long-time friend of the family. Through their union I was born. Shortly thereafter, my eldest sister Joanne was killed in Buffalo when she was hit by a truck as she ran across a busy street. She was thirteen. My mom was devastated, and her life changed a lot in a very short time.

 

I look at a photograph, and knowing all the events that transpired when the shot was taken, I extrapolate beyond the flash of a camera smile. I see the unknown, the mysterious. Perhaps I see things that were not really there, I don’t know. I was very close to my mom, and she was not a shy, introverted person. She was honest with me and she was an excellent role model. Mom was an active and productive member of her community, sat on many boards, was generous with her time and money, and volunteered at a nearby hospital, on the ward that tended to children who had cancer. I just wish I had a clearer vision of her journey. Everyone has a story to tell, a history that explains their journey, if we are present to listen. As the years roll by, and as we log some hard miles on our travelling souls, the journey tempers us. It is tempering me. I know my mom was an interesting, creative, intelligent, woman, and I also know that the circumstances in her life changed her considerably. When I allow myself to be sad - and I rarely indulge myself in that emotion when it comes to my parents - it is because there is so much that, in retrospect, I would have liked to have known. I was too young and self-absorbed when I should have been asking questions.

 

LAUGHING

 

I WAS LOOKING THROUGH SOME SLIDES OF THE 50S AND 60S
BACK WHEN YOU AND MOM WERE IN YOUR HEYDAY
RIDING WESTERN SADDLE IN THE PALM SPRINGS DESERT
LAUGHING AND LOOKING LIKE YOU’D LEARNED TO SEIZE THE DAY

 

BUT CELLULOID IMAGES FROZEN IN TIME HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO LIE

WHAT LURKS BENEATH THE FLASH OF A CAMERA SMILE?
I NEVER KNEW WHAT YOU WERE FEELING, FOR I WAS JUST A BOY
BUT I WONDER ABOUT IT EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE

 

WERE YOU LAUGHING, LAUGHING THROUGH THE PAIN
WHEN YOU LOST HER CLEARLY SOMETHING DIED INSIDE
LAUGHING, LAUGHING, BUT ISN’T IT A SHAME?
I DON’T REALLY SEE YOU BUT I KEEP LOOKING JUST THE SAME

 

THESE DAYS I LOOK AT MY LIFE WITH BEMUSED DETACHMENT
NOTHING TURNED OUT AS I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE
WHAT TELLS REVEAL A SOUL THAT’S GONE ASTRAY
GOALS, AMBITIONS, DREAMS THROWN INTO A ROILING SEA

 

HELPLESS I LOOK FOR MEANING IN THIS FREEZE FRAME REALITY
LOOKING AT PHOTOS OF YOU FOR A GLIMPSE OF ME
YOUR SMILE BELIES THE DISCONTENT YOU TRY TO HIDE
I’M LOOKING AT TWO PEOPLE I COULD NEVER SEE

 

alt verse:

(MAYBE WE ARE ALL PRODUCTS OF OUR MANGLED HISTORY

WE PUT ON SMILES LIKE COSMETICS TO SHADE OUR IDENTITES
BECAUSE OF YOU I’VE NEVER TRUSTED  FACES I SEE
BECAUSE OF YOU I’VE NEVER REALLY LOOKED AT ME.)

 

WRITTEN 3/6/14

 

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

The Oppenheimer Report 5/2/16

My friend, James Carroll, passed away last Wednesday afternoon, and the loss has been much harder than I thought it would be to process. Slowly, over the past year or so, I have grown to know and respect the man, as I came to realize how much he had accomplished in his relatively short time on earth. I became very close to him as a friend in a very short time. I was with him frequently over the past four months, and Shauna talked to him on the phone for an hour or so almost every night. I’m not really sure why, but it’s as if James chose us to be his lifeline at the end of his day. It was our privilege. From about the time he was diagnosed in December until his demise last week, we were in contact with him a lot. Now, it doesn’t take much to bring my grief to the surface, and I find myself crying at the drop of a hat. I’ll hear an old ad with James’ voice on Hunters Bay Radio – James was still recording ads for the station as recently as a month ago – and that will bring me to tears. Over the past several days, the Hunters Bay Radio hosts have been dedicating their shows to James, and those shows have been meaningful and therapeutic for Shauna and me. Hunters Bay Radio is a community radio station, and James Carroll was in so many ways the voice of this community. Everyone at the station who knew him is a mess, because in one way or another, James touched all of our lives. He was intelligent, generous, kind, funny as hell, charitable, and humble.   

Shauna and I called him “Menschy”, a derivation of the Yiddish word “Mensch”, which means a good man, a man of integrity. James called Shauna “Punim”, which is Yiddish for “face” or, as it was used to describe Shauna, “cute face”. His nickname for me was not fit for print. Knowing we were Jewish, James would spout Yiddish-isms at will. He’d roll his eyes and exclaim “Oy Vey!” with his usual dramatic flair, and it always made me laugh. He found something personal to discuss with all of his friends and acquaintances which demonstrated that he was interested in their lives. When Shauna created a Facebook tribute page so that people could reconnect with James, we had no idea how important that would become. There are now just under 700 members, with membership growing by the minute, all extolling the virtues of their friend, fellow actor, radio personality, charitable community member, and the many other things James was in his life. Each post added a new dimension to his complicated personality. On my radio show "Lyrical Workers" last week, the day after he passed, I wasn’t sure I could get through the whole show without breaking down. In between sets, I took Shauna’s advice and read some of the Facebook posts on air. That got me through it.

As the Program Director, Producer, and Host or many shows at Hunters Bay Radio, James was responsible for creating and editing many of the programs that aired. Among others, he created/hosted shows like “Motown Monday”, "Martini Music", "Oh Canada", the Friday night "Hunters Bay Radio Top 20 Countdown" show, and his shows were always entertaining. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of music and his interviewing skills were excellent. Last summer, he interviewed Jose Feliciano, as well as Blood, Sweat, and Tears front man, David Clayton Thomas. On a community radio station like Hunters Bay Radio, James was the prominent voice of the station, and he was an inextricable member of the community.

I met James when I first walked into the radio station back in the early part of 2014. At that time, I was extremely self-absorbed and nervous about performing some of my original songs live on the air. I met him briefly, along with station manager, Jeff Carter, but I did not really grow to know the man for another year. When I began to host my "Lyrical Workers" show on Thursday nights, James was running the board for the Thursday night “Live Drive” shows which aired an hour before my show began. We got to know each other then and I really grew to love him. James was so affable, intelligent, and such a wonderful storyteller. We developed a close friendship. We had something in common; we were the only two Americans at the station. There have been many tributes to James Carroll thus far, and one need look no further than his JAMES CARROLL - A TRIBUTE page on Facebook to see how universally loved he is. I came into his life as it was ending, but I see why so many people loved him from so far back. There are some people who simply shine brighter than the rest of us, and that intangible quality is difficult to put into words. James always made me feel significant, and I will miss that humble, interesting, intelligent, and loving man, deeply.

            .

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED