by Dan Caro
Once I’d won my scholarship to Southeastern Louisiana University, I thought I was on my way. The depression that had dogged me since early high school lifted, partly because of winning the scholarship and partly because of the amazing transformation I was seeing in Al.
I was feeling good about myself, and my future was looking pretty sunny. But as I would learn, depression is a slippery animal that can disappear for a bit and then return to bite you in the butt when you’re not looking.
I sure wasn’t looking the day I showed up at SLU to register for the fall semester and finally met the jazz-band director. I’d been trying for weeks to contact him, since a major reason I was going to this college was to play in the jazz band, and I needed the director’s written approval to join. Despite my repeated phone calls and e-mails, however, he wasn’t responding to my messages.
My dad suggested that I just drive out to the campus to find this elusive director—the man who, temporarily at least, held my musical and academic future in his hands. I took his advice and knocked on the man’s office door.
“Can I help you?” the director asked.
“My name is Dan Caro, sir. It’s nice to meet you. I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks,” I said, as politely as possible, as my eyes moved around the room admiring the fine music books and classic jazz posters lining the walls. “I’m a drummer, and I’ll be attending classes here this fall. I’d like to get into the jazz band, so I was wondering if I could get your permission to do so.”
He looked me in the eye, glanced down at where my hands should be, and brought his gaze back to my face. In that instant, I was certain that he knew exactly who I was—that he’d heard about “the burn boy” who wanted to get into the program. I knew in a second why all the messages I’d left for him had gone unanswered. In his eyes, I saw a look I’d seen hundreds of times before. It’s the same look, I’m ashamed to admit, that I gave Al when I first met him—a look of prejudice.
Standing in this institute of higher learning, it didn’t feel any different talking to a university professor than it had encountering a bully in the Terrytown school yard so many years before. I prepared myself for the blows to come. Even though I’d been on the receiving end of these since the age of two, it doesn’t mean that it gets any easier to take the hit—just the opposite. It’s like when my movie hero explains in Rocky II why he doesn’t want to go back to fighting in the ring. He says that getting punched in the face 500 times a night stings after a while.
With sarcasm dripping from every word, the band director gave me the verbal version of a punch in the face: “How can you play drums?”
I kept my composure and patiently started to explain my technique to him. I’d brought a wristband and drumsticks in my bag to show him what I did, but he didn’t allow me to demonstrate. Instead, he waved me toward the door. “We already have a drummer,” he said. “And he’s a grad student, not a freshman.”
“But this is a state university, and I’m here on full scholarship,” I protested. “I’m not asking for special treatment, I’m just asking to audition! The jazz band is supposed to be open for auditions to every student … I only want to—”
Cutting me off, the director repeated, “I said, we already have a drummer for the jazz band, and he’s a grad student. You’ll have to sign up for the improvisation-method class.”
The improvisation-method class! That was a course in jazz basics, for God’s sake! For beginners! At this stage in my career, I’d already played gigs with some top professionals. At the very least, I deserved to be allowed to audition; in fact, it was my academic right to be allowed to audition.
There’s another scene from Rocky II that comes to mind when I meet people like this band director. Rocky’s old trainer, Mickey Goldmill, warns our hero to be wary of the boxer he’s about to step into the ring with, saying that the man doesn’t just want to beat Rocky, he wants to humiliate him. (Please don’t think that I live my life with a loop of Rocky II playing continually in my head, but there are definitely times when the story of the underdog being beaten down again and again resonates with me so intimately.)
I was furious with the jazz director and wanted to lash out, but there was nothing I could do. I had no power as a lowly freshman, and he was at the top of the academic pyramid. I couldn’t even convince him to hear me play or take a minute of his time to let me show him how I could hold the drumsticks. But I wanted to play jazz, and this man was my key. There was only one other way to accomplish my goal.
“Improvisation method, eh?” I said, nodding my head, as I turned and left his office.
A few weeks later I was in my first “basics” class, and it was made up entirely of incoming freshmen with very little experience. I didn’t want to appear overly confident with myself, but at the same time I didn’t intend to purposefully hide the fact that I was already a professional musician.
I positioned myself behind my drum set and waited until it was time to jump in and show my mettle. Thirty minutes later, after all of the intro stuff and course-outline explanations, it was my turn to hit the skins. I started banging the hell out of those drums, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the look of shock on the director’s face. When I finished, the rest of the students applauded.
After class, as everyone else filed out the door, the director called me over for a private chat. “I’d like you to sit in on the jazz classes,” he said. “I’d really like you in the band.”
I guess I should have been flattered and elated. I’d proven myself and shown my ability. But the problem was that too much time had passed for me to be officially registered in his advanced class. It was impossible for me to drop the “basics” class now and enroll in the one he was asking me to “sit in” on. SLU had a strict policy on course selection: there was one week of add/drop, and that was it. After the first week, you were locked in to a schedule and no changes could be made. So, instead of being thrilled, I felt somewhat annoyed.
“You want me to sit in?” I repeated. “You do know that add/drop week is over, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. Just come and play. We could use you.”
They could use me. Great! I wouldn’t get any academic credit; it would be like playing a gig for free when everyone else in the band was getting paid. Half of me wanted to slug the guy, but my better half wanted to get my damn anger in check and do the thing I most wanted—play with that band. And if I’m going to be completely honest, I was hoping I’d get the chance to hear two little words from the man who was going to be my professor for the next semester. I wanted to hear him say, “I’m sorry.”
I never heard those words.
In the end, it didn’t matter if the band director apologized or not. The only thing his apology would have done was stroke my ego, and I was starting to realize how much my ego could hold me back. Instead, I accepted his offer to sit in, and I played with the jazz band without credit for the first year.
That year was amazing for me musically: I built up a solid reputation as a jazz drummer at the school, had a lot of fun, and was invited to be the lead drummer of the jazz band the following year.
But music and schoolwork made up just a part of my education that year. Thanks to my drumming student Al, who turned the tables of prejudice on me, I learned to look beyond my own ego and get to a place where I hoped I’d find peace of mind and maybe even happiness.
Chapter Nine
In the Spirit
My musical career took off like a rocket at Southeastern Louisiana University, and I was suddenly finding myself in demand as a drummer. Not only was I playing with the three top academic bands at SLU, I was also gigging with at least three bands off campus. I found that I just couldn’t say no when I was asked to perform, taking all the gigs that came my way. I was so busy some weeks that my classes became an afterthought.
More and more, I knew that music was where my heart was, and my heart was becoming lighter the more I played. That pesky depression I’ve talked
about had finally begun to lift; in fact, most days I wouldn’t even think about my personal problems. I was happy just practicing and playing music (and, when time allowed, studying).
But while my heart was often happy, my soul still craved answers. Since wandering away from Catholicism, I’d been searching for something to fulfill me spiritually. For a long while, I was certain that fulfillment could come solely from music. Yet as I ventured deeper into the world of the music industry, I began understanding what the word industry meant, and that I didn’t exactly fit industry standards. It was a harsh lesson that began innocently enough while I was earning a little cash playing weddings and corporate parties with a jazz trio during my sophomore year.
At one of these events, we were approached by a woman who worked for a very large hotel/casino in Las Vegas. She came over and chatted the three of us up during our breaks and told us how much she liked our music. Before she left that night, she promised that she’d put in a good word for us with the entertainment promoter at the casino. Since he was a friend of hers, she told us there was an excellent chance he’d book us to play there.
I was excited, to say the least. I mean, I was just 19 years old and was almost assuredly on my way to play Vegas! A few weeks later, the casino promoter indeed called my bandmates and me and offered us an amazing gig. The deal was for a one-month booking at $2,000 per week, with all expenses paid. Not bad for a teenager!
We were faxed a contract and asked to send in a glossy photograph of the band that could be posted on the casino’s marquee to promote our act. We didn’t have a picture of us together as a group, but we were so excited to be asked for one that we rented tuxedos and hired a professional photographer to take our promo shots. We sent the pictures off to the promoter and waited to hear back regarding our travel arrangements. And we waited … and waited.
When the casino promoter finally called, I was given my first business lesson in big-time showbiz.
“Thanks for the photos,” this guy said to one of my bandmates. “We still love your music and really want you guys to come out here and play, but we’ll supply a drummer for you when you get here. Your drummer doesn’t fit our image.”
Until that moment, I’d naïvely believed that the music profession was about the music. How wrong I was! Once again I was being judged by how I looked, not by who I was or how well I played. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been the greatest musician in the world; it seemed that the industry was all about looks and image. I cursed the casino, I cursed Las Vegas, and I cursed the words business and industry. I was so upset that I vowed never to pose for promotional photographs again—if a promoter or club manager ever insisted on a picture again, I’d hire a model to sit behind my drum kit for me.
The best part of this experience was that my bandmates refused to take the gig and go to Las Vegas without me. It was an act of friendship and loyalty I have never forgotten.
That Vegas rejection was like a wasp’s sting, and the poison of it revived many of the old wounds I’d buried from years of insults and discrimination. As I kept discovering, though, it’s impossible to bury past pain. What I’d eventually learn is that the only way to permanently deal with inner darkness is to open it up to the universe and let the light of positive energy shine on it.
But as a teen, I wasn’t there yet. I still had demons dancing in my subconscious that pounced on any and every opportunity they could to resurface. So for a few months after the Vegas setback, the blues from my early teens made an unwelcome reappearance. Now, instead of being excited about landing gigs, I could only focus on being rejected, and I’m sure I sabotaged several musical prospects without even knowing it because of my negative energy.
WHEN I WORKED WITH AL at Randy’s music store and dealt with the jazz director at SLU, I became aware of how energies—both positive and negative—could affect the creative impulse that drove the human spirit. Not long after the whole Vegas episode, I knew it was time to be done with any feelings of doubt and gloom. I was hungry to expand my world beyond the physical plane … I was ready to learn a better way. And because I was ready, because I was now a willing student, a teacher again appeared to me. One day I looked up, and there was Wolf.
His full name was “The Grey Wolf That Lives in the Corn That Not Even the Wind Can Touch,” but his friends called him Grey Wolf, or just Wolf. He was married to a woman named Pale Moon, and the two of them were always in this coffee shop I liked to frequent. They were both Native American—she was Cherokee, and he was Choctaw. In fact, Wolf was once the leader of the Louisiana band of Choctaw Indians. He was also a Vietnam vet, a 25-year veteran of the local police department, and an incredibly well-rounded and in-depth man.
One day while I was waiting to get some coffee, Wolf nodded to me. Although we didn’t speak to each other, I sensed an amazingly intense yet peaceful energy radiating from him, which I could feel from several feet away.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m pretty sensitive to the energy people give off, but I’d never encountered anything resembling the positive vibes I was picking up from Wolf. I was drawn to him right away and wanted to strike up a conversation, but I could see that he was busy chatting with his wife. Plus, I was running late for a rehearsal.
The band I was playing with at the time had a few out-of-town gigs, and several weeks passed before I went back to the coffee shop and saw Wolf again. This time he was sitting by himself, and his lovely wife was nowhere in sight. The memory of our brief encounter had stayed with me, so I went over and asked if I could sit with him while I drank my tea.
“Pull up a chair, my brother,” he replied. His dark eyes were so deep and penetrating that it was if he were drawing me into his mind. He didn’t even seem to notice my scars and instead looked right into my soul. When he talked to me, I felt that he was speaking to my heart, not my face.
“So tell me about yourself, Dan,” he said as I took a seat across from him.
“You know my name?” I was surprised, as we’d never spoken before.
“Sure. I see you all the time, and it’s kind of like family in here. I’ve asked about you from time to time, since I haven’t seen you for a while. I was curious to meet you, but I didn’t want to be intrusive, so I waited for you to come to me.”
“Oh,” I replied, surprised again. I told him that I was a musician and had been busy working, and I wondered why he’d been asking about me. “I’m sure you want to know what happened to me, right?”
Wolf looked me in the eye and said that while he was interested in what had happened to my body, what he really wanted to know was who I was as a spirit. A spirit? I’d never heard of anyone wanting to know about someone else’s “spirit” before. The whole idea intrigued me. I knew that Wolf was Native American, but whatever limited information I had about his culture had been gathered from the movies or glossed-over history books— which is to say, I had no factual information whatsoever. My new friend was going to change all that.
As I told Wolf about my accident, I could feel his energy flowing through me, carrying me to a place in my mind I’d never explored before. He put me at ease while he brought out the deepest of my inner thoughts and beliefs, rough and jumbled as they may have been. He listened without judging, and he looked at me in the same way—he never averted his eyes from my face.
Later in the conversation, I asked about the spiritual element of his heritage. I knew I’d just stumbled upon something worthwhile, something that was now resonating loudly in my head and in my heart.
“Indians are spiritual in the sense that we have an appreciation and reverence for our environment,” Wolf explained. “We give thanks for being alive, and we thank the ‘Great Spirit’ for providing us with food and shelter. The Earth has a spirit that she shares with us, so we are grateful for that.”
I was quite intrigued by what Wolf said. During our many talks about spirituality over the years, I came to learn that most religions have the same core belief system and are more or less aligned with eac
h other. Except for terminology and ritual, there isn’t a great deal of difference between the heart of Christianity and the spiritual wind of the Choctaw—a great spirit drives and inhabits us all. When I discovered that, my mind opened up like a spigot, and all of these amazing thoughts and feelings began flowing through me. My spiritual self was awakening, and I saw my life in a new light. This light was so intense that my self-doubts, insecurities, and depression could no longer find a place to hide.
Wolf was what you might call my first guru. He taught me new ways to look at the world and, in many ways, helped me liberate my spirit.
IN MY NEWFOUND FREEDOM, I found the courage to once again open myself up to a young lady.
I met Ariel at a café near the SLU campus. I was settling into one of its coveted window seats when I noticed an exotic-looking girl across the street. I was daydreaming about what it would be like to meet such an attractive woman when she ran across the road, came inside, and started chatting with the people at the table next to mine. A couple minutes later she was somehow sitting across from me and asking me about music.
“My friends tell me that you’re a musician and your name is Dan. So, Dan,” she said with a big smile, “all day I’ve been trying to figure out who sings the song ‘Cat’s in the Cradle.’ Any idea?”
I was flustered by both her openness and the way she was so immediately at ease with me. I managed to respond, “Harry Chapin, I think.” Although I was trying my hardest to sound calm and cool, I knew that I must be coming across as a little nervous. Yet within a couple minutes, I realized there was absolutely no need for me to be nervous around this girl.
Ariel was an SLU student as well, and different from any woman I’d ever met. She was sweet, funny, and easygoing; and she made me feel right at home in her company. In some ways, she reminded me of my friend Matt from high school, a person with no pretensions who just wanted to be friends with me for friendship’s sake.