Welcome to "The Wocket."
As a writer and media producer, most of my work is crafted for clients, employers, or media platforms. This Substack, however, is a space for me to share the words and ideas that I want—and often need—to write for myself. Here, you'll find a blend of personal essays, reflections, and explorations of the societal, cultural, and political landscapes of today. I also hope to add some fiction, biography/autobiography, and multimedia content in the near future.
These are the Wockets in my Pockets.
I didn't want you to navigate to an empty Substack, so I've skipped a formal introductory post and am diving straight in with a new piece written earlier this week.
Look for one piece of new writing and one archival piece per week, with a summary of notes, flotsam and jetsam attached to one or the other.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you find these pieces engaging and, perhaps, even a bit therapeutic, as they are for me.
And now…
On with the show.
I’ve been singing Clara to sleep since before there was a Clara.
And always with Neil Young.
The nameless, genderless, gestational belly-bump that would eventually become Clara won’t remember, but would have heard me soothing her in utero temper tantrum feet and fists with “Comes a Time” or “Sugar Mountain.”
I don’t talk about it much, though I probably should, but there were other children – siblings to Clara that were never blessed to see the sun – that were soothed by the lyrics of Uncle Neil as well. Same belly, different babies. Couplets never destined to be songs.
There are lyrics from those faraway times that left exit wounds on my heart. My breath still sometimes catches as the words escape into the present nighttime bedroom of my lucky one. My love.
Why Neil Young?
Practicality mostly.
I mean, most of his music doesn’t exactly lend itself to infant/toddler/childhood/tween sleepy sleepy dreamtime bliss... Unless you’re as dark and mournful as Clara’s dad. Or Clara herself, as we’ve slowly come to realize.
But, as those of you who either know me well, know me from times before stage fright finally barfed me out of performing, or who take the time to listen to the bits of music I post, take down an anxiety-perforated hour later, and then pretend never happened, will know (boy, is this a sentence or what?), the heart of my upper vocal range sits squarely in the key of Neil.
What key is that?
You know, sometimes I think that neither of us really know.
Then there’s the fact that I can sing numerous Neil Young songs by heart. I mean, a *lot* of Neil Young songs by heart. So many Neil Young songs by heart that they creep into otherwise designated areas of consciousness; squeezing aside such integral information as where I parked my car, my gym locker combination, my dog’s name, my child’s name (both of which I eventually land on after a stream of names that starts with our old, dead dog – RIP, Cedar – then whichever of the two’s attention I’m not trying to get) and any other simple thing that my ADHD challenges me with.
But now we find ourselves adrift on a sea of digressions.
I sing Neil Young songs at bedtime because they have left indelible notes on both my soul and my vocal chords.
And I don’t think that Clara or I would have it any other way.
Sure, I’ve flirted with other artists, other songs, other genres than the melancholic bittersweetness of Neil, but none have ever stuck. Inevitably, a verse or two in, Clara will ask for something from his catalogue instead.
“Sing ‘Pretty Piggy,’” she’ll yawn, referring to “Old Laughing Lady” and the now self-aware malapropism of the opening “Don’t call pretty Peggy” line.
“Sing ‘Aurora Borealis,’” she’ll coo (still at the age of nine), quoting the first line of “Pocahontas.”
And always: “Hiding Behind Hay Bales,” her name for the sprawling dreamscape lyrical masterpiece that is “Thrasher.”
“Puff the Magic Dragon” can’t hold a breath-lit candle to the likes of “Thrasher.”
“‘A’ You’re adorable?” Sharon, Lois, and no-thank-you-ma’am.
I thought for a while that the Beatles might hold her attention, but after the magic wore off the intermittent “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” we returned to our regular Neil Young rotation.
And it *is* magic. An incantation sung. There have been times in her life (we’re going through one now) that Neil’s songs and Daddy’s voice (and presence) were the only constants sure to lull her into peace, security, and eventual slumber.
In her first year of life, held snugly to my reclined chest, my pinky finger (the only soother she ever knew) in her mouth, my heart beating a gentle rhythm, she’d inevitably fall asleep to a gentle lullaby of “Like a Hurricane.”
A few years later, when she heard the howling electricity that is Neil’s actual performance of the song, she looked at me incredulously.
“That’s what you were singing to me?”
These days, though, the howling electricity is the one in her own head. The ADHD she inherited from me. The mood disorders that both feed and tumble out of it (inherited, again, from me). The giftedness that makes the neurotypical world so, so difficult to navigate (yeah… sorry about that one too, kid).
When she’s not dreaming, life is far too often a nightmare.
I’d spend my whole life hugging her if I could. But she’s nine. So hugs only come on her terms.
Neil, though... Neil still helps us find the peace. The security. The slumber.
It isn’t always me doing bed – though I try to do my fair share – and when I do, there often isn’t singing anymore. Sometimes it’s reading together. Sometimes it’s a half hour of audiobook or podcast. Rarely, though, is it nothing at all.
But on the rough nights, it’s song. Backrubs and song. Sometimes a whole lot of song.
Even on nights when it isn’t my turn to do bed, I’ll sometimes be called in for relief. In the middle innings when Krista’s being roughed up (don’t get me wrong, I get roughed up too), or late in the game to mop things up.
It’s tricky though. It’s cat and mouse.
Sometimes she’ll fight sleep as hard as she can, just for a few more moments of shared song. Of shared us. Sometimes I’ll catch her whisper-singing along instead of trying to fall asleep (“sailing heart ships through broken harbours…”). Sometimes, just when I think it’s safe to start sneaking away from the bed, there’ll be musical murmuring from beneath the blankets (“when you see me fly away without you, shadow on the things you know…”).
Sometimes song is the thing that keeps the sleep at bay.
Until I get to the aforementioned “Thrasher.”
“Thrasher,” you see is my finishing move. It’s the Stone Cold Stunner of Clara/Neil lullabies. The People’s Elbow. The Atomic Leg Drop, if 1980s Hulk Hogan WWF is more your wrestling jam.
It knocks. Her. Out.
If I’m worried that “Thrasher” won’t do the job, I’ll soften her up with any number of tracks from Neil’s self-titled album (no shortage of soothers there), or with the lulling repetitiousness of “Round and Round” from Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, or with any of the other tracks that share space with “Thrasher” on the acoustic side of Rust Never Sleeps. And then, when I finally get to “Thrasher,” I’ll sing it extra slow to ensure that it lasts longer than she does.
Curiously, it’s “Thrasher” that made me realize how integral the lyrics are to this process.
“Daddy,” she used to pipe up from the deep breathing edge of sleep, “what are ‘park bench mutations?’”
Clara lives these songs in the slippery pre-sleep moment, sifting through them for meaning, writing her own stories to flesh them out. More than once she has told me that she dreamt the songs, but couldn’t articulate what that actually meant.
And so I had to be careful with the words, editing some on the fly, mumbling out others that might cause for questions, comments, concerns, or issues too large for calming a young child’s mind.
“They massacred the buffalo/kitty corner from the bank” from “Pocahontas” became “And then there were the buffalo…” The verse that begins “They killed us in our teepee/and they cut our women down…” would be left out altogether (they’re being slowly re-introduced now).
Sometimes there are verses that I wish I had edited out, such as the absurd “eat hot dogs!” line in “Here we are in the Years.” It almost always generates non-sleep-inducing giggles, even if the rest of the song fills Clara with a woolly (and sleepy) nostalgia for country fairs.
But the other side of this cat and mouse game is that, and Clara doesn’t know this, even when I suspect that it’s safe to stop singing, I sometimes don’t. And it’s not just finishing the song to be on the prudent side either, though I never fail to do that. Sometimes it’s a good song or two (or three) past the point that her breaths have turned to teeny tiny snores.
It’s then, it the darkened bedroom, that Clara (and Neil) soothe my ragged soul. It is there that the many exit wounds are healed, that my heart’s own tantrums are soothed, that Clara (and, yes, Neil) complete me.
Innocent, beautiful child of mine, at peace from the ravaging, ravaged world; safe in my arms, and me, in that brief moment, safe beside you; the tumult of our racing thoughts quieted; no longer tense and bracing for the inevitable daily impacts of a relentless world shared together apart.
With your heart the rhythm of song, your breath in essential countermelody, I offer Neil’s (but also just so very much my) tenor melancholy.
And, for never, ever long enough, it is enough.
Thank you, Clara. Thank you, Neil.
“Here we are in the years
Where the showman
shifts the gears
Lives become careers
Children cry in fear
Let us out of here!”
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