Good Audio Makes the Ear an Eye




Metro-North Eastward, from the northside platform, Stratford, Ct

 

the last train by j.b. mcneely

Tomorrow, I go to get the keys.

Then the prodigal officially returns to the Upper West Side.

75th and Columbus, up two streets.

The frame store is still there, but Bernard has retired

The Chinese/Argentinian restaurant persists

and the framed painting of my master's ki remains

Return to training and the circle is complete.



     And so, the weed-hopper, returns to his first teacher, M. Crevani, student of Heshiki Sensei, 72nd Street Dojo, Matsu-bayashi, karate-do. Those were my garrot years in the city that never sleeps when I first began my training in the art of the fist some thirty years ago. (Not really a garrot, no. On the second floor of four-floor brownstone on 73rd Street, except that when the third floor shower was used, it rained in my kitchen.)

These are the years that I am told now that I will look back on with fondness. Perhaps, in a Proustian sense, it can almost be, whatever I make of it and such is the fragility of memory. These pages, these pages of my 'Burn This' years, of theatre on the sleigh, sleight of hand, slight of mind.



Joe McNeely as Lee Harvey Oswald
The Sixth Floor
The Douglas Fairbanks Theatre



Hard now to remember the time when I was that thin. Those were the years of training. Long stretches of framing, bartending, waiting, and the occassional audition or show, sometimes even under union contract.  Princes and assassins.. Henry V and Lee Harvey Oswald. And those were some venues. Henry V, off-Broadway, 42nd Street, Theatre Row;  The Sixth Floor at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre.

Yes, back in the day when I strode down Broadway and everyone took me for a star, or was that just my imagination...running away with me.


Bob Hall directed. Founding member of The New 'Rude Mechanicals'. After this performance, I did a small role in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a cameo in the Scottish play, during which I found my love, the mistress of my heart, and then Prince, nay King Hal. Then the theatrical career kind of trailed out. Had an audition for Joyce's Ulysses, but traveled to the West Coast instead. Turned down a paying gig, to play the wordiest mother-f#%$er, William Shakespeare ever wrote.

And there in, lies a tale,
a tale but for some other time...
The story of the audition
the breakfast, the walk in the park, the I'll be looking into these eyes for the rest of my life.