Of all the obscure places I have looked for my Dad over the past 20+ years, I never thought it would be inside 10 Kodak slide carousel slide trays, but that's exactly where I found him.
It is where I found a piece of myself. It is where I found a message of hope, boldness and magic that changed me and how I lived.
This is my Dad's story. This is a generation of change, freedom and truly living, story.
This is “Being Cool”
First, some background on the “basics.”
These reels of slides held within them up close and personal shots of countless musical legends like Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, James Taylor, Paul McCartney, ZZ Top, and many more. These were all photos that my Dad shot, circa 1970's in and around Atlanta, GA. My Dad passed away in 1996, leaving me, my 10 year old brother and Mom behind. Those are the solid facts, but that’s the least important detail; what transpired was so much more than the photos. Let me explain…
These slides had become a mystical folklore of sorts.
They existed as stories passed on by my Mom for more than 2 decades. We heard all about them over the years, but never saw or really understood what they were or why they seemed SO important to my Mom. To say “I get it” now would be a gross understatement.
For many reasons that now make so much sense, this long 20+ year journey to finally obtain these infamous works of art finally happened this year, 2021.
Timing is everything, they say, and with this, I couldn't agree more. The flow of life that is always happening. It carries on all around us despite our desperate human attempts to push up against it. We try to force things, we NEED our way, we “HAVE” to have things…. or do we? Maybe, just maybe, the better path is always quietly waiting within us and all around us. Maybe it’s just waiting for us to surrender. To let go of our need to control everything, which is impossible and an illusion based out of fear, at best.. This human need to try and control EVERYTHING in our lives is exhausting. This frantic drive to control life is doing the opposite, it is limiting us to the infinite potential and power that exists in our BEAUTIFUL SWEET surrender. If we would only TRUST the process, listen to our own inner knowing, the flow of life, and just LET IT BE, what magic could happen! The point to this tangent is that this is exactly what happened to me, I finally LET GO. I have traveled the country, multiple times, trying to surrender to life, to “find” something that was missing. I have chanted Sanskrit, driven to the top of the Hopi Indian Mesa in a snowstorm, I have been blessed by Shaman and other various healers. I have stood on energy vortexes, howled at the moon, prayed without ceasing and even toyed with becoming a Monk. I have swam in “miracle” springs that promise healing. I have walked labyrinths built with crystals. I have been quiet, still and loud and hysterical. I have been searching for the point to this life, the spark I so desperately needed to re-find to make sense of me. Of all the places I have just mentioned, while powerful and awe inspiring, I found all I needed within those 10 Kodak Carousel slide trays. This journey of learning to LET IT BE is what allowed me to find my Dad, my voice, his voice within me, his untold story and a much needed reminder of who I am because of who he was.
So, the 20 years of many failed/forced attempts to obtain the only “want” I ever had from my Dad finally happened in 2021.
It happened by very little force, planning or effort, as these things do when it is meant to be. The slide trays traveled the length of the eastern seaboard from Florida to Pennsylvania. by planes, (no trains) automobiles and a couple Uber lifts. They had finally come to me, exactly when they were supposed to, even though I was not yet aware of this. In that beautiful rhythm of allowing, the spark of genius, magic and limitless potential was given the air to ignite and create. This would become a moment in time that changed the course of my life. It’s funny how it always seems to be the thing we aren’t looking for, the seemingly small thing that is right below our radar of awareness, that holds the perfect puzzle piece to our lives biggest questions. Everything has the potential to be magic, if we only allow it to be so.
There is no question that my dad was larger than life.
This is not just because he was my Dad, but because of the countless stories about how he LIVED his life. To set this stage properly we will start with a classic story – the hostage situation.
This is a man that was held hostage on one of he and my mom's first dates. After being held at gunpoint for hours in my mother's then apartment, my Dad was able to talk the guy “off the ledge” (aka shotting them both) by convincing him to let him to go to his car to grab a joint he had. He returned with said joint, to my mother’s great relief. He then skillfully smoked the joint with the gunned man and saw him out of the apartment. Only after he fired a round of bullets into a tree off the apartment balcony. My Mom told us that when my Dad left to the car for the jay, he could have just left her there held captive. The relationship was new and he had no real obligation to her, but that’s not what he did, that’s not who he was. Ironically this traumatic situation brought my mom and dad closer. They married not long after this.
This same man, my dad, who once shot a security guard for stealing my parents pot plant off of their patio.
The same man, now a Dad of a three-year-old me, that came home after running his car full speed into a train parked on some railroad tracks, while drunk, and of course fleeing the scene.
He promptly collapsed when my mom opened the front door.
My dad who took a shark bite to the foot with six-year-old me playing right next to him in the ocean at Jekyll Island, Georgia. He simply and softly said, “go to go to the shore.” That shark bite didn't shake him either. He refused all medical attention, wrapped his shark bitten foot up with a towel and put down a fifth of vodka. That was his medicine. That was his way. He smiled the entire time, which probably had a lot to do with the vodka. I have the home video to prove it!
My dad who got a DUI on Christmas Eve and pulled over into a liquor store to receive his punishment.
You see, my dad didn't just take concert pictures, that's way too simple, he impersonated a “People’s Magazine Photographer”
I mean, this was pretty genius, harmless and while it may have broken some “small” rules, the stories and moments in time weigh out anything else, at least in my mind. I mean, the shots he captured are epic, and he did all of this, my Dad, but also the man I was meeting for the 1st time this evening spent looking and I never fully “got him” in this way, until this moment. Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Pink Floyd up close and personal made possible because my Dad believed he could, and he did it. He didn't just believe he could pull off something this wild, he knew he could. Whether he could or couldn't, was never a question on the table for my dad. Not this, not anything. There was never an obstacle in his mind that he couldn’t use his wit, charm or “gift of gab” as my Mom called it, to make anyone believe pretty much anything; and like him while doing it. So, that’s what he did, over and over again…Wearing his iconic, 1970’s long leather jacket, the fake lanyard labeled “People’s Magazine - Press,” and most importantly, his million-dollar grin sprinkled with mischievousness. He undoubtedly hit it off with whatever security guard he encountered. This gave him access to countless opportune locations to take shots of some of the most incredible artists of all time.
The night presented itself shortly after getting back to PA to dive into this mega project. I somehow had the house to myself and nothing but time. I was excited to take a peek at these legendary slides I had heard so much about but had ZERO inkling of what I was in for as I turned on the old, dusty projector stacked atop some books on my living room floor. As I sat in awe looking at Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, and so many more I started to FEEL my Dad. Only, this wasn't the version of my Dad I had grown to know as a child or as a teen. This was very different. This was like I was meeting my Dad for the first time, seeing into the looking glass of who he was and the epic mark he left on his wild, but short life here.I fully catapulted my being into this visceral connection that was unfolding within me. This deep thread that anchored us together that I didn't even know was there. A connection that I needed more than I had any idea of, despite “being well adjusted” to his early departure from our lives. My Dad reminded me of who I was because of who he was. I felt the totality of who he was. I realized he wasn't just a legend because he was my Dad, he was a legend because he LIVED. I realized the best way to convey something as big as a human life, their essence, their “beingness” was sitting right in front of me in these dusty old Kodak slide trays. In the connection being made as I met my Dad, the man, and not the adult who raised me.
I fell deeper into this time warp before me as I continued clicking through the 1,000 + slides packed away in their dusty, “vintage,” 1970's orange, cardboard cases. With every dusty click of the now burning hot projector, I started talking to my dad. I mean, I've always sort of talked to my dad quietly, but this was different. As Lynrd Skynyrd blared through the crappy, ill replaced Alexa, instead of a proper stereo with record player. I began this new conversation with my dad and the proper context would be me speaking as a fan and amazement of his workWith each click of the slide projector I walked in his very tall shoes. I realized these dusty boxes of legendary slides were all a part of a much bigger story of a man that I get to claim as my dad. Stories like this just have to be told period it would be an epic failure to let these stories of old not be heard. I mean this was what being cool was named after.
Through these photographs I gained this vibrant clarity that this was so much more than some cool pictures of amazing artist.
There was a strong underlying energy flowing, a current, that was presenting itself to me. These pictures were like a portal that were tapping into a legacy of time that is very relevant to us today. These photos captured more than musicians, they held within them an era, a critical moment in human history, a movement of the people. These are the moment in time is when many people chose to break away from the narrative, the limiting beliefs and constructs about what made them “good” or “bad,” the norm of society, the oppression; the war in Vietnam, JFK’s assassination tragedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis, to name a few horrors in this time period. This is when people stopped choosing to be led by fear and instead chose love, music, LIVING, BEING ALIVE These days were such critical moments, a true shift in consciousness (aka the human spirit to LIVE) where people made a different choice. A critical mass of people broke out, they CHOSE to live boldly, without fear, without oppression. They used music as their language to set them free, and it truly did.
We have this era, this generation, to thank, to learn from, to remember how to be bold, to be brave and to LOVE and not HATE.
This is where it began, it had not been done before in this way. A total shift of the human spirit to break out of the mold, the box that many would like to keep us in. I could feel in my whole being what that actually felt like.
It would be an epic failure to not carry on the messages these memories offer. I decided, in the moments of time between clicks of the projector, that I had to be the conduit for these messages of the past to reach the many people today that may need this reminder. These moments in time captured on these Kodak reels reminded of a time when things felt simpler, truer, raw and authentic. This was when freedom meant how you chose to live, think, be; not something that can be won or awarded to the few; our innate knowing'ness and sovereign right, that we are always free despite our outside circumstances. Truly being free from within. A time where nothing could be cancelled and living your best life actually meant BE-ing and LIVE-ing, not another self-indulgent social media post to convince yourself, and the masses, that you are “the best.”
This was a true time when freedom rang, nothing could be cancelled living your best life actually meant doing it.
Memories like these actually meant something, not just another obnoxious self indulgent social media post. When you could let it all hang out and really truly live. I don't mean some watered down version of someone else's life based on unmet dreams of a fragile and broken person or society. We have today these were real memories made because they could, not because someone else is watching or because it attempts to fill a seemingly abundant bottomless void of a black hole of human over consumerism and overconsumption we see today people places music, it all meant more. I guess that's what caught me on this chilly, Pennsylvania October evening, as I rocked out with my dad's photos shining through that perfect hue that only a 1960s slide projector makes. I felt the rush of life the slides captured as I danced in my socks across our family room, stopping only to ask my cat Casey's opinion of the next shot popping up on the wall. The wall that became as big as any theater could aspire to be any number of things could have happened in the story of the slides, or if any of these stories would have faded out with a whisper and become an echo
Stories like this one just have to be told.
Death has a way of immortalizing people, making them blameless, 6 ft. tall and bullet proof, “legendary,” at least in the minds of the loved ones left behind. Over the last 25 + years since we lost my Dad the tales have grown taller, the wrongs often righted and like so many people that go too soon, a certain ageless wonderment sets in, like the “27 Club” and its infamous, yet imperfect members such as Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and so many others.
