YOU’RE NOT USELESS!

The most creative, productive and rewarding time of my life had nothing to do with having a proper job or getting paid. I was on my third try at college after pursuing degrees in Recording Engineering and Music Merchandising. I loved the recording studio (still do) and aced the recording classes, but got frustrated by the politics of gaining enough studio experience. I then tried Music Merchandising, which was the university’s attempt at making a music degree a practical option in the job market. My mom had also opened a music store at the time and the plan was that I would help her run the family business. I’m passionate about music, but my actual musical skills are rudimentary at best. A year into the two years of required music theory and piano lessons, I realized I was in way over my head. Imagine trying to learn a foreign language without knowing what you’re saying. That’s how I felt in music theory classes. Both my parents were piano teachers, so of course I had to take lessons as a kid, but the lack of dexterity in my hands caused by Cerebral Palsy made progress difficult. It was still very difficult when I tried piano again for my degree. This wasn’t working. Then my parents divorced and the music store was liquidated, so the family business was gone. I had to find something else.

Eventually I decided to get a Library Technician degree at a Community College. It seemed to be something I could do fairly easily and I threw myself into every work-study and internship program I could find. My wife and I got into low income housing. She worked various jobs and I had my disability payments, so we survived the best we could. The Library Technician degree gave me a direction, but something else came along that was even more important and life-changing.

I don’t remember how I discovered Factsheet Five magazine. I’d given up on Rolling Stone long ago and Musician may have folded by that time, so I know I was checking out a lot of different publications by then. Factsheet Five reviewed hundreds of small press and self-published zines in every issue, which opened up a whole new world for me. I discovered Amateur Press Associations, or APAs, writers’ groups that have largely been connected to science fiction fandom since the beginning of the genre. Members of these groups produce multiple copies of their own zines, send them to a central mailer, who collates everyone’s work and mails the resulting collection out to all the members. The group I joined was one of the longest-running general interest APAs where any subject was open for discussion. For the first year or two, I published mostly personal zines, which were basically blogs before blogs existed, writing about my life and commenting on other members’ zines. APAs are tightknit communities and I formed quite a few friendships over the years.

I contributed to nearly every bi-monthly mailing. One month, as the deadline approached, I’d finished reading Glimpses by Lewis Shiner, a sci-fi novel about a music fan who unexpectedly starts hearing unreleased albums by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors coming through his stereo. The book spoke to my heart and I decided to write a long-form review about it in my next zine. A breakthrough moment for me!

Around the same time, Crawdaddy! magazine relaunched. This publication is cited as the first US music magazine, which was founded by journalist and Dylanologist Paul Williams in 1966. He sold it in the 1970s and brought it back to life in the early 1990s when I discovered it. Williams is mentioned in Glimpses. The protagonist also visits Beach Boy Brian Wilson during the recording of the then unreleased Smile album, eerily just like Williams did in real life. (Paul asked Shiner if he had known about the visit when he was writing the book. Shiner said he hadn’t.) I wrote Paul a letter saying how much I loved Crawdaddy! and sent a copy of my Glimpses zine. He loved the zine and asked me to be the first outside contributor to the new Crawdaddy! I think this is still one of the most thrilling moments of my entire life.

I wrote for the magazine until 2002 when Williams ceased publication. He suffered a severe brain injury in 1995 and about ten years later started to show signs of dementia. Paul passed away in 2013. I still miss my friend and mentor. Sometime in the 2000s, the APA imploded as computers took over publishing and members drifted away. I also got laid-off from the closest thing I had to a dream job as a cataloger and writer for the Experience Music Project museum (a job I landed largely because of my writing for Crawdaddy!). These huge losses diminished my world and I don’t know if I’ve ever fully recovered from them. I tried to keep writing by launching a website, but when my ISP went out of business, I didn’t bother to keep it going. (It’s my old site that still comes up on Google. Someone affiliated with the Bruce Springsteen Archives actually tracked me down last year using the old site to ask me about articles I wrote for Springsteen fanzines in the early 1980s. I’d totally forgotten about these first tentative journalistic forays!) I started this new Letter to the Vatican blog hoping it would get me writing again. So far it’s helped. A little.

My jobs in recent years have been uninspiring and, since the pandemic, very precarious. I know I’m lucky to have a job, but I’ve felt pretty useless for a long time. Lately I’ve been thinking about the nature of work and trying to appreciate my accomplishments that may not be considered “real” work. A YouTube video titled You’re Not Useless by Jessica Kellgren-Fozard addresses society’s concept of work and how people who don’t fit into it are viewed. In a world where one is expected to develop a new software program before breakfast, how does a disabled person, whose biggest challenge might be making it out of bed and getting dressed every morning, find a place? Jessica, who is deaf and copes with neurological and autoimmune disorders, expresses her thoughts on disability awareness (and many other subjects) with unflagging candor and wicked humor. (I’m also required to mention that her hair is fabulous!) Her videos are always thought-provoking. You’re Not Useless made me think back to when I was prolifically writing and people would ask what I did. I’d answer, “I’m a writer,” which was often dismissed as not a real job. I now realize how important my writing career is. My writing has given me quite a few amazing experiences and I’ve met some great people along the way, too. I may regret many of the jobs I’ve had to take throughout my life, but I don’t think I’ll ever regret anything I’ve written. My writing is not useless. I’m not useless.

NOVEMBER 2020