The Soundtrack of a City


Back in late Autumn, 2008, as the last of the tree leaves descended onto the thinning grass, I struggled to figure out the third act of the story. How does it end? I kept asking myself. So I took two steps to help me:

1. I printed out color headshots of all the actors I wanted in the roles, with their character names included and then taped them all up on the wall that faced my writing desk.
2. I made a soundtrack off all the songs that sounded like what I wanted the film to look like.

Once I did both, thus cementing the tone for the story, finishing the script came much easier: looking into the eyes of those faces and listening to those songs inspired my sense of sight and sound.

A decade later, as Jacob and I work on finishing the most current version of the story, I was thinking of revisiting the soundtrack to see if it still fits. But couldn't find that list of songs anywhere. And, yet, just yesterday, while going through some boxes of my older projects, I just happened to come across the CD album that not only contained the older script file and original cast ideas/poster, but, also, that very soundtrack I was looking for.

I recall when I was first curating this soundtrack, the criteria was a very short list:
1. Songs about Cleveland (or at least mention it)
2. Songs by musicians from the area (including Akron)
3. Songs that felt like they belonged

One of these songs is Leonard Cohen's "So Long, Marianne." But not his version. Rather, as covered by James. I first heard them perform their cover back in 1992 at a show in Chicago and right back then I knew that that song felt like a movie. That it was a much bigger story than the re-arranged lyrics the band took liberty with. In fact, the original screenplay title was So Long, Marianne. And, she's still a central character in the story. Just not the main one.

Another song is "Cleveland Rising." I wrote the lyrics to the song back in 2007 after waking up in cold sweat post-reading a Cleveland Magazine article on local beatnik poet d.a. levy. Over the next year, I recruited a band. We professionally recorded and produced the song. Since then it's circulated in contests and maybe even radio play.  Who really knows? And a few years ago Cleveland Rising became a theme in this city, a hashtag used by local media to showcase the resurrection of the place that somehow I had much earlier sensed would do that very thing.

The rest of the songs, the ones that were about Cleveland (Look Out Cleveland/The Band, Drunk on the Moon/Tom Waits, Cuyahoga/REM, Missing Cleveland/Scott Weiland, Burn On/Randy Newman) or by Akron bands The Pretenders and Devo (My City Was Gone, Boots of Chinese Plastic, I Can't Get No Satisfaction) nail the essence of this place. This sense of place.

Regardless of artist, decade or genre, the songs are not upbeat. They are not optimistic. They are not sunny.

They are about loneliness, erosion and a river catching fire. They are about a storm coming through and about missing the snow. They are about a rustbelt city on one of the Great Lakes where each day its residents complain about the weather, the economy and the sports teams but would rather do that than ever leave.

There's a strange gravitational pull here and it's what made Cleveland a hub of industry: the river, the lake, the railroad. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil here. At one point this place was the fifth biggest city in America. And then it all crashed. And after a small uptic ~ 2005, 2006 and 2007, in 2008 it, along with the rest of America, crashed again.

But then the Millennials grew up, LeBron brought home the first championship ring in over half a century and global publications are touring its tourist potential. Suddenly it's all eyes are on Cleveland. Again.

That's where my story picks up - at the height of the city. 

Since I first built the above soundtrack, Leonard Cohen died of old age and local native Scott Weiland of an overdose. Two former band mates of Devo, Bob Casale and Alan Myers, passed from heart failure and stomach cancer. The Band's Levon Helm lost his life to throat cancer.

Life. Death. Up. Down. Day. Night. Light. Dark.

Cleveland has seen it all and like all proper Midwest, Great Lakes, Rust Belt cities, with each directional shift, with each new generation taking charge, the secrets and energies of the past decades and ancestors run with it, just like the Cuyahoga.

Sometimes the river that catches on fire is the family line. Cleveland City is all about that soundtrack.




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