THE LOUDNESS OF LIFE by Peter Nolan Smith

Not all intellectuals have been exiled by the exorbitant rents from Manhattan and one spring evening editors, writers, publishers, agents, actors, painters, and pundits gathered at a West Village triplex to celebrate a right-wing journalist's safe return from the Libyan revolution. Her stories of the rebels' fight against Khadaffi's regime appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. She was a hero in our eyes and her parties were always fun. The first arrivals congregated in the basement kitchen. The Guatemalan maid poured rose champagne and red wine.

Our Saharan tanned hostess was dressed in a sleek black dress complimenting her svelte figure. I congratulated her daring exploits with a paperback 1st edition of Jacqueline Susann's VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

"I love her." Anne thanked me for the gift and swiftly swung her attention to the avalanche of guests descending the winding stairs. None were famous, although several had come close.

Within thirty minutes the kitchen was congested with smart people sounding smarter with each glass of wine. Conversation was nearly impossible with the rise tide of volume.

Years ago I would have glowed at the center of this cosmos.

Tonight I simply desired some quiet words, which wasn't happening in the basement and I ascended to the ground floor, where I ran into a friend's ex-wife. The the 34 year-old brunette also came from Boston. After a few questions about my family in Thailand, the magazine editor asked if I wanted to have a baby with her.

"You have several kids. I want a baby before I'm too old." Beth seemed so fragile in this desire.

"You will, but you deserve better than me or your husband." I was devoted to Fenway's mom and I introduced my friend's ex-wife to a good-looking and single banker.

Her smile disguised the disbelief of happiness in her time. I left the two to get acquainted and I descended from the mosh pit for another glass of wine. The maid was trapped in the kitchen. She'd never make it any higher to serve the other guests. I signaled for her to pass a bottle of wine to me. It was a Chablis.

The bell rang and I opened the door to another onslaught of guests. They piled their coats and jackets on the sofas before descending into the ever louder basement. I climbed to the second-floor and found a Laotian-French girl was sitting with her Lebanese boyfriend. The restauranteur was praising the wave of rebellion washing across the Middle East. A Wall Street banker proposed a toast to Democracy. My glass stayed at my side and I said, "This is less about Democracy than the struggle of the poor against the rich. No jobs, no food, no rights."

"Well, here's to the rich." The Lebanese boyfriend drained his glass. A sneer twisted his lips. His aspiration to wealth was no sin in America. Everyone wanted to be a billionaire.

I spoke to a pregnant literary agent about giving birth. She asked for advice from a father of four. I only know what I know and said, "Don't have a c-section. Let the baby sleep in the bed with you. Feed the baby breast milk as long as you can and quit working your job. Your baby is more important than any book."

She thanked for this counsel and asked about my writing.

I raccounteured the outline to my short stories about hitching across America in 1974.

"Lesbian orgy in Big Sur, LSD on Black's Beach, drinking moonshine with ex-cons on Route 66, ghosts in a haunted mountain house in Vermont, gay marines at a disco in San Diego. A tale of lost times."

"Sounds fantastic."

"Maybe you'll get to read it one day," I said with a smile, even though I have abandoned any hopes of having my stories published in a book.

I'm 58. Editors want young blood. Writers who have a knack for tapping out fiction on their Blackberries. That person was not me. It was time to go home.

Barely midnight, but one the way out I was introduced by an English dandy to his friends as a man who had been thrown out of Thailand.

"Excuse me." His comment bordered on slander and as a younger man I might have assaulted him in front of everyone, however AD had actually lent me $100 upon my return to the States and that money had come to my family. That favor granted him liberty at my expense.

"Come on, everyone knows how the Thai police escorted you to the airport in chains." The ex-child star lifted his head to laugh at this image. His friends regarded me with delight. I was a true criminal in their midst.

"That's a funny story, but not even close to true." I swiftly explained how the Thai police had treated me with absolute deference. "No chains, no dirty jail cell. They bought me dinner after I paid bail. The head detective said that he would protect me. Three months later I paid a $100 fine for international copyright infringement and the police were waiting outside to take me for drinks again. I'm persona grata in Thailand. By the way I'm paying off everyone who helped me back then. Here's your c-note."

The fop snatched the bill from my hand. He has two kids. I left the room, as he recounted to his friends about the sordid details of wiring money via Western Union. AD was quite right about that. Western Union offices are drenched with the sadness of desperation and I haven't been to one in ages.

The dB level downstairs was reaching a peak. Centuries ago Samuel Johnson said, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." I suppressed a yawn, slipping out of the house without any goodbyes. I wasn't tired of life or New York. I simply wanted to get in my bed. It wasn't cold outside on the street and I walked over to subway on West 4th Street. The A train was making local stops to Far Rockaway. Home in Fort Greene was less than 30 minutes away.

Jon Lord Deep Purple RIP

Deep Purple's Jon Lord passed out of the Here-Now to join friends, family, and fans in the Here-Before, but his music with the premiere heavy metal band in history shall survive in the Here-Beyond for as long as young boys sing the four note motif of SMOKE ON THE WATER. The classically trained pianist was Hammond organ player was the first recruit into the supergroup along with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore to form the backbone of band. Nick Simper on bass, Rod Evans as lead singer, and Ian Paice filled out the line-up and their 1868 cover of HUSH went to # 4 in the USA, despite poor promotion from their record company on the strength of Lord's Hammond B-3 organ routed through a Marshall Amp. "Lovely a sound as it was, it wasn't quite giving me what I wanted. I could hear another sound in my head - something harder, something more throaty. You tap straight in and put it through a straight speaker and you get a beast." His song SMOKE ON THE WATER was inspired by a fire during a recording of a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention gig at the Montreaux casino and the LP MACHINE HEAD reached #7 in the States. For a long time Deep Purple held the record the "globe's loudest band" when in a concert at the London Rainbow Theatre their sound reached 117 dB. Three members of the audience were knocked out by the dB overload. See Guinness World Records Come on everybody, you know the words. "Smoke on the water. Fire in the sky." Jon Lord RIP

Good News For Some

FDA officials in the US have greenlighted an HIV prevention drug. Studies on Truvada show that the once-a-day pill can reduce the risk of infection by up to 73% if used with common sense and condoms. Medical experts caution against considering this drug to end the scourge of AIDS, citing concerns about creating a drug-resistant virus coupled with a return to the Sodom and Gomorrah climate of sex in the 1970s. Truvada also has some nasty side effects; diarrhoea, nausea, abdominal pain, headaches and weight loss as well as a hefty annual cost of $14,000. Good news for some, which is better than the bad news of so many years. I'll keep my fingers crossed for the best.

The Amazing Shrinking Palestine

Last week an octogenarian Wall Street retiree financed an ad campaign on New York suburban train platforms showing the shrinkage of Palestine. According to the official British Survey of Mandate Palestine, issued in 1945, private ownership of land by non-Jewish Palestinians encompassed 24 million dunams (approximately 90% of Mandate Palestine), while Jewish land ownership was only 1.5 million dunams ( approximately 5%). The four maps are accurate, but ignited a maelstrum of outrage such as from the Manhattan-based Jewish newspaper, The Algemeiner. “This is anti-Semitic because when people think of Jews they think of the Jewish state. Jews have seen this happen so many times. It always starts with messaging that says Jews are committing a crime.” "If Israel is wrong for stealing land from the Palestinians, then how guilty is the USA." James Steele criticized his country for their land grabs of Native American lands throughout the 19th Century which strangely resembles the minimalization of Arab territory in the old British Mandate of Palestine and further added, "As for the claims of anti-semiticism, the definition of semitic pertains both ethically and linguistically to the language family of Middle East." Wikipedia extends this family to the following ancient and modern dialects; Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Ge'ez, Maltese, Canaanite/Phoenician, Amorite, Eblaite, Ugaritic, Sutean, Moabite, Edomite, Ammonite, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, Chaldean, Mandaic, Ahlamu, Syriac, Amharic, Tigre and Tigrinya. Anti-semiticism could apply to prejudice against any of these ethnic groups, not just those of Jewish persuasion, although in Western culture the term mainly refers to persecution of the Jews, since they were the only Semitic group in Europe for centuries. New Yorkers are blind to the kinship. We are the world. And the world is a small place.

Damita of CBGBs

CBGBs was the la Scala of the East Village during the 1970s. Debby Harry was our Maria Callas, but not all the action was on stage. The lives of the musicians and regulars intertwined for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. None of pretended that we were family, but I regard my friends and associates with undying fondness, even though I can't recall what we did together other than hang at CBGBs. That was enough for most of us, because like CBGBs we were all so special and I found this Marcia Resnick photo of one of the most special. Damita, the little runaway. I google-searched for her, finding a small narrative from Legs McNeils' epic PLEASE KILL ME. Like so many things of my past they only exist in the past. And that's for the best in most cases.

Rootless Evil

Back in 1974 my good friend AK and I traveled cross-country to Encinitas, a small beach town slightly north of San Diego. We were crashing at his friend's bungalow and our days were spent sunning and bodysurfing at Moonlight Beach or smoking pot and drinking wine at night. We made friends with a hippie guitar guru wandering the coat with a long-haired blonde. Rockford and Carol were free as the wind. "We only want a place to sleep, eat, and place our music," Rockford explained atop the bluff, as the sun set in the Pacific. They were staying with a clinical psychiatrist from UCSD studying the effects of LSD on humans. They were only two of his guinea pigs and the acid left them daily dazed. One afternoon Rockford defended his participation by saying, "I don't believe in money. I have everything I need in one bag." "What about your guitar?" "That's my extra, but other than that one bag is all anyone needs in this life. Some clothes, sandals, and a good book, plus a little weed." Rockford offered me a place in his band. Carol played tambourine. I was soloing on kazoo. He looked at my canvas travel bag. "Way too much shit." "It's almost nothing." I had more clothing than the two of them. "Nothing is nothing other than nothing." Carol dismissed my excessive possessiveness with a wry smile. I wasn’t getting the message and the next morning they left without me for San Francisco. AK and I hitchhiked back across America. We re-united with Rockford in Woodstock. The three of us have been, AK ever since and I never asked the old hippie about abandoning me to a life of meaningless acquisition. This morning I read an article in Huffington Post echoing Rockford's one bag theory. A 69 year-old German woman abandoned money twenty-two years ago. The divorcee has perfected a barter economy called “Gib und Nimm” or Give and Take. Her attempts to convert Dortmund's homeless to a moneyless society was met with derision by the workless and retirees addicted to cash or credit, but her year-long experiment has made her a happier and healthier person. According to the HP all of her belongings fit into a single-back suitcase and a rucksack, she has emergency savings of €200 and any other money she comes across, she gives away. Heidemarie doesn’t even have health insurance as she didn’t want to be accused of stealing from the state, and says she relies on the power of self-healing whenever she gets a little sick. Rockford, who knew better than you that money is the root of all evil, but somehow I don't think this theory works in a go-go bar. At least not at my age.

The Cost of Happiness

Happiness is relative. Most people think rich people are happy. I have lived in Palm Beach and Duchess County. Their wealth is no guarantee of happiness. Wives run away with brothers, husbands are murdered in a jealous rage, children are abandoned at birth. Very much like Thai soap operas, however listening to high society moan about their woes, I suspected that they air their problems before the lower classes only to still any latent revolutionatry asperations.

Money might not be able to buy happiness, but its buying power might be able to rent it, for cold hard cash is king in today's consumer society and several years ago the chief executive officer of a Thai national bank addressed this issue at a seminar by descrying the basic faults of capitalism.

A banker against capitalism? The date was pre-2008.

His unsparing criticism of the #1 capitalist country in the world attacked the inadequacies of the Thai health system and lambasted the short-term satisfaction of materialism, while also recognizing the inequalities of the Thai system, especially in education. "Many children spend their lives going to school on the back of a motorcycle or a bus. Yet the children of those setting these policies sit in a Mercedes. To address these and many other ills, we should have a different focus, one focused on life, on quality of life."

Nice to say money isn't everything once you have it.

For the rest of us happiness can be achieved in the small things like finding 100 baht in your pocket or making a green light on Pattaya Tai or being told you're sexy by the girls of Soi 6. That happiness does not have a price.