An Interview with Chance Casper

II

 

            It’s 2:30 a.m. and the diner is so packed we have to wait to be seated.  A large painting hangs in the foyer.  I know it well because it was the cover of Chance’s first album, Arcade Plush.  The subject seems innocent enough, though quirky—stuffed animals jammed inside an arcade plush machine—but something about the scene is disturbing.   Maybe it’s the slightly askew perspective that seems to suggest it’s worth no more than a passing glance.  But I think it’s the dire situation of the stuffed animals that makes me feel queasy.  I didn’t notice it in the glossy, diluted form that I’m more familiar with, but in this one, I can see the bulging eyes of the animals are pleading, not so much with a “pick me, pick me!” anticipation but more of a sullen, please-get-me-the-hell-out-of-here look you’d find on a crusted-lipped, starving child in some far-off, impoverished area of the world.  And then the bodies of the animals aren’t light and fluffy but instead seem weighty and imposing as if they share a common purpose to crush and disfigure each other—a giraffe’s neck in the stranglehold of a purple elephant’s tusk; a unicorn’s head positioned between a monkey’s legs, putting an unsuspecting velveteen bunny in the immediate foreground in a precarious position.  The overhead grappling, grab-o-matic prongs seem so spindly and useless that they don’t even earn a glance from the animals, as if they know better than to expect help from above.

Chance turns down the first two available tables to get the booth he wants.  He recognizes a waitress.  He points her out to me and says, “Those eyes are like a bass groove that you can’t get out of your head and will creep up on you in some pretty random moments.”  And then I realize why he came here.

Those eyes belong to Mazie Allen, and when she sees him, she quickly approaches.  “Stanley Goldstein!”

He doesn’t stand, forcing her to stoop to hug him.  “I’m still Chance Casper until I leave this place,” he says.

“I heard you were in town.  I would’ve come to the show if I could’ve gotten off work.  It’s our busy time.  Four days till Christmas.  How was it?”

“Same.  Automatic for the last five years.  You know, this was our last—”

“Hold that thought.  We’ll catch up when things die down in here a bit,” she says.

She rushes away to check on other customers.

“She used to come to all of our gigs,” Chance tells me.  “She bought into the myth of rock ‘n’ roll glory, thinking that just a taste of that counter-culture elixir might free her to some kind of deeper illumination.  Imagination freed is illumination achieved, I’d tell her.  Girls will believe anything you tell them as long as it’s blended with the right mix of poetry and booze.  She was a good lay.”

I’ve never known Chance to talk this way.  This isn’t how he was back when he was Stanley and we were a couple of college students with crazy perspectives of the world.  There’s some bitterness and resentment built up inside of him.  He won’t stop talking about Mazie; I realize she was something more.

“You know, she did the art to our first album cover.  That one out front.  That got her art more exposure to the world than she would have ever gotten doing anything on her own.  She was an artist, self-taught, but a total hack.  The problem with her was that she was blind to original perspectives.  She spent all of her time going over the masters trying to copy their techniques and producing half-witted composites always a shade off.  Guess it’s no surprise she’s waitressing now.”

“So she was more than just your average groupie.”

“The ultimate road warrior, you know.  She had the enthusiasm of a religious disciple.  My parents hated her.”

I ask him how he felt about her.  Really.

He responds with several minutes of silence.  “I loved her.  And then she left—hitched a ride and came home to Fargo.  My mom knew about it before I did.  How the hell does that happen?  They hated each other.  Women don’t get it, but they bond in their confusion.  They have this notion of how things should be, and if things don’t fall between those two narrow lines, shit, everything falls apart.  Everyone gets bored traveling down the same highway, and women, they just freak out if you detour for some sightseeing.  And most people have to create this illusion that even though we’re bouncing off the walls, we’re somehow staying within the lines.  Not me.  I put it out there like it is.  I am about truth.  If people can’t handle it, they don’t belong in my life.”

Out of the original band, only Simon (the drummer passed out with his head on a bongo) and Chance remain.  I ask him about the rest of the original band.  He knows I’m asking specifically about Sal, the guitarist who many considered the life of the band, the one with the flare and million-dollar smile.

“After nine years of jamming with us he got amped on the fantasy that if you got married and went to school to get a business degree and had a life where you work inside an accounting office punching numbers into a computer and pressing compute and then turning it into your boss with a big juvenile grin on your face like you want a gold star or something but really you’re just begging for money like any guy on the street, that somehow that would make you happy.  And he took that route.  You know what happened to him?  He got married.  He got his job.  He got a promotion.  He got fired.  He got divorced.  Now he’s living in a shack up in Portland and working in a bookstore.  And the only reason I know this is because he randomly Facebooked me and sent a message that said, ‘Hey man, you still playing in a band?  I wanna get back.’  Fuck that.  We’d moved on.”

“So how do you really feel about him?” I ask.

He laughs.  “He’s probably happier than me.”

The crowd finally thins.  As cars back out, their lights cast a diffused glow through the snowfall.  Mazie returns and chooses my side of the booth, forcing me to scoot over.

“So how long ya’ in Fargo?” she asks him.

“Plane leaves tomorrow night.”

“Headed?”

“I dunno.  Boston.”

“That’s nice.  Visit the folks for the Christmas holidays.  How are they?”

“Hey listen,” I say.  “You think I could crash at your place?  I left the keys to the van with Simon.”

“Ah, Simon.  How is the little drummer boy?”

“Still a sucker for love but keeps a steady beat.”

“That guy.  He hardly says a word but gets any girl he wants.”

Chance puts his hand on the table and his fingers do the same unconscious crawl across the surface that I’ve seen many other musicians do—the body never relenting in its desire to make music—but here I feel like his fingers are doing a courtly dance, hoping that she might make contact with them.  “He didn’t get you,” he points out.

“He didn’t want me.”

“So listen, about the place to stay.  You think I could crash at your place?  I don’t mind waiting until you get off.”

The smile she gives him in response looks motherly.  “Stanley, I’m married.”

“What?”

“I’ve been married for five years now.”

“But online you’re listed as Mazie Allen.”

“The miracle of Facebook.  Is that how you found out I’m working here?”

Chance takes a slow sip of coffee in response.  “I’m not stalking you.  You can turn around and walk away, and I won’t follow.”

“I kept my name because I had a following…with my artwork.”

“You still doin’ that stuff?  Why are you working here then?”

“Aw, come on.  You know how it is with art, never knowing when the paychecks will come.  This gives me a steady income and it gets me out of the studio to draw on some real-life inspiration.”

“What does he do?”

“Who?”

“The guy.  The one you married.”

“Well, he’s in music, too.”

“In a band?”

“Kinda.”

“What band?”

“Actually, he’s the band director at the high school.”

He bellows out in laughter.  “What a pathetic, pointless job.”

She clenches her teeth.  “He’s spreading the joy of music to ordinary people.”

“Band students are not ordinary people.  They’re just pimpled kids too awkward to do sports, too dull to do theater, and too tone deaf to sing.  So you give these kids a hunk of metal to blow into and just pray to God they don’t bop someone on the head and hurt ‘em.”

“He’s—“

He covers his ears.  “You don’t have to say anymore.  I’m already insulted.  You have kids?”

“No.”

He sighs in satisfaction.  “I miss you,” he says.

“Ok,” she says before disappearing into the kitchen.  There are only a few customers in the diner now, but we don’t see her for another twenty minutes before Chance waves down the manager and asks him to track down our waitress.  She comes back to our table with her notepad covering her eyes.

“Look Mazie, I’m sorry.  Sometimes I come across as brash and tactless.  That’s Chance Casper talking.”

“You can’t hide behind a name.  You weren’t suddenly reborn as Chance Casper.  The same old Stanley Goldstein lies behind those eyes.  A new name and a fresh shave don’t give you a clean slate.”

“Look, I haven’t slept well in days, and I’m feeling emotional now, thinking this might be my last time in Fargo.  You know, this was our last show tonight.”

“And you picked Fargo of all places.”  She places her hand over her heart.  “On behalf of the citizens of Fargo, I’m honored you chose our city to be your final resting spot.”

He makes no secret that he’s livid, and I feel caught between an ex-lovers’ quarrel, a witness to his self-annihilation.

She lays her notepad on the table.  “I’m sorry I missed it.  Really.  How was it?  Did you play The Well?”

“No.”

“Really?  That was my favorite.”

“Mazie, it was pretentious crap.”

“Oh my God, how can you say that!  ‘Your perception is in the angle of the reflection that meets your eye.’   I love that line.”

“For Once then Something.  Robert Frost.  You showed me that poem.  All I did was twist his language around a bit.”

“Under the surface is a glimpse of something—maybe nothing—but it bends your mind.”

            “Stop!” he snaps.

“What do you have against your early stuff?” she asks.

“Because it wasn’t me.  And you should have been able to tell that the chord progression of The Well followed the one in the old tango we used to listen to.  You remember the one, Por Eso Me Siento Mal, from our Buenos Aires days?”

The Well basically consists of a bass hook and a whiney keyboard that repeat endlessly until the chorus that is nothing but “Ohs.”  It was his only commercial hit, but it came at a price.  People wanted more of that hooky pop.  Chance didn’t want any part of it.

She stares back towards the kitchen as if searching for some impending crisis.  “I didn’t know any better.  But I still love those songs from your first album.”

“I could’ve written a thousand tunes like that and retired with a mansion in The Hills.”

“Why didn’t you?  Nobody needs to know how you came up with the songs, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care.”

“I care.  And I didn’t do this just for the money.  That first album was to get us in the mix.  Mindless ear candy for the masses and the musically ignorant.  All artists have to sell out a little to pay the bills.  After that, it was all about the music.  I had to break free from the template of the past.  You’ll never understand.  Most people don’t get my music, and I can’t help that.  It’s the price you pay for originality and freedom.  I had no fear.  I could write rockin’ rhythms, stilted rhythms, 5/4, 7/8 time, tk-a-boom-boom-chahh.  I could layer melodic lines with slowly diverging contrapuntal phrases and make atonal beauty.  Pure originality is hard to appreciate.”

She drops her head and speaks mostly to her Adidas.  “There’s no such thing as pure originality.  You can’t escape the past.  It hangs on.”

“I broke free.”

“It hangs on to us.  Being interesting to yourself doesn’t make you anything.  Art doesn’t exist without people to share it with.  All that matters is how you affect people.”

“My music will be important.  If no one clears the table and starts over, how does anything change?  We’ll go on recycling old tunes until creativity is sucked right out of our consciousness.  That’s why I threw it all out there.  Each song contains a little bit of everything.  If you could just understand—”

“I don’t, Chance.  You can’t suddenly decide to redefine music.”

“Why not?  Sounds have no inherent meanings.  Music needs no bounds because it recreates life, and life is not contained within an octave, and it doesn’t follow a particular scale or stay within a dynamic range, so why should music?”  He’s almost out of breath.  “I know you’ll argue—”

“I’m not—”

“—each song is just a moment, like one of your little paintings, but within one moment can’t a man be helplessly in love, stricken with jealousy, mad with rage, slightly wistful…soundly defeated?”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“I was speaking hypothetically.”  He gathers his breath.  “Look, I’m only here for a short time.  My plane leaves late tomorrow night. You wanna go do something?”

“Again.  Married.”

“He won’t let you have friends?”

“He’d be fine with it.  I’m the one who’d have the problem.”

Chance looks like he’s about to choke.  “You really hate me that much, don’t you.”

She glares at him.

Several inebriated Santas stagger into the diner and slump into a corner booth.  They’re all too young and too hardened to be convincing.  They each have their Santa hats on, but they’ve unstuffed their bellies and pulled their beards under their chins making them look a little Amish except for their obvious disdain for their seasonal job.  It’s a short-term gig, the Santa thing—two weeks tops—but their caffeine-craved faces are more than a pair of rosy cheeks from being jolly.  One of them passes by us on the way to the bathroom and glances in our direction, which I’m sure Chance will misinterpret as recognition.

“I don’t hate you,” Mazie says.

“Maybe the three of us could do something,” he says.  “I’ve gotta meet the guy.”

“And what?  You and I would reminisce about the past?”

“I thought you’re the one who loves the past.”

She picks up her notepad and jots something down.

He tries get a look at what she’s writing but she conceals it against her chest.  “What did you write?” he asks.

“Don’t want to forget what you said, so I wrote it down.”

He grabs her arm, but she pulls away fiercely.  “Read me what you wrote.”

She runs her fingers over the words a few times before she reads them aloud.  “Eggs.  Toast.  Bacon.  Make you fat.  Anything else?”

“More time with you.”

She shakes her head in disgust.  “What world do you live in?”

“Well, you and I are talking here.  How does that fit with your enlightened morality?”

“You’re my customer.”

“In that case, have you ever thought about investing in gold?  It’s the safest investment in these financially uncertain times.  Come be a customer of Goldstein and I’ll tell you all about it.  Lunch at noon?”

“No.”

“Two?”

“No.”

“Four?”

She turns to walk away.  “Do-I-take-that-chance,” she repeats like a mantra as she laughs and shakes her head.

He finally acknowledges my existence again and asks me, “What did she mean by that?  ‘Do I take that chance?’  Or did she mean ‘Do I take that Chance?’  Or ‘Do I take that, Chance?’  I swear to God, I really need a middle man to explain her little riddle that’s probably nothing more than just a joke, but it makes me feel small.”

The santa passes us on his way back to his table and laughs.  He’s caught the tail end of Mazie’s performance.  Chance threaten him with a spoon as the santa joins his friends.  “Do you know who I am!” he calls out.  Every head turns to look at Chance, but the one he’s concerned with doesn’t flinch. She continues on her path and disappears again into the kitchen.   She doesn’t return.

III

 

            We’re stuck at the airport the next night since all the evening flights have been delayed until morning.  I’m accompanying Chance back to Boston.  I have family I need to see there, too.  The sun eventually rises and we’re allowed on the plane along with other weary-eyed passengers bundled up in scarves and coats.  My first attempt at doing an interview was a complete failure.  A wasted flight for an unpublishable piece.  I find my seat and immediately check out the on-flight music selection.  There he is.  At least one of his albums made it—his first one, Arcade Plush.  As we ascend into the white sky, I can see the virginal snow expanding across the land until it merges at the horizon with the stratus clouds.  There is so much beauty on that vast, frosty canvass.  Whiteness closes in until I can no longer see the wings.  When exactly that happened, I’m not really sure.  It’s a thousand miles to where we’re going, but I won’t be sleeping anytime soon.