MEMORIES

Anyone who's read any of my work knows I care a lot about getting history correct, at least as I've lived it and witnessed it.  But whenever I do more research, I discover new evidence for the need to correct something I thought I knew well.

Photos can be like that too.  Someone sent me this photo through the Internet earlier today, Colleen Halsey, a friend from my L.A. days who I met through her twin sister, Jo An Kincaid.  It was taken at her wedding to Richard Halsey, and that's me standing with Bob Chartoff with the glass in his hand.

I almost didn't recognize myself.  Partly because I'm wearing an oversize oil slick pattern suit coat I thought made some kind of absurdest statement about style constrictions.  (Possibly influenced by David Byrne's giant suit STOP MAKING SENSE period.)

In this shot it makes me look like I weighed a lot more than the 150 pounds I've weighed since I was fifteen (and still do) except for a brief period when another L.A. friend talked me into working out and building another ten or fifteen pounds of muscle. Which the ladies seemed to dig but made me feel extremely uncomfortable.

Anyway, there I am, in a shot I almost thought was someone else. In a moment in my personal history looking like I wouldn't have remembered if I hadn't seen this photo. Not only because of the brain operation and aging in general, but because candid snapshots like this often surprise with their this-couldn't-be-me unexpected reality.

Memories. Almost as good as making new ones.