Davis Your Love Pursues: A Memoir

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4835-3747-4
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

Your Love Pursues, a memoir by Recording Industry Executive Jason Davis, is more than another rags to riches tale. It is more than triumph and tragedy. It is the story of one man's incredible journey in the music industry, and how, in the midst of it all, he found something far more valuable than anything on earth.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Davis, Jason

Leseproben

Chapter One - The Plastic Guitar

It all began with a yellow plastic guitar my parents bought me when I was two years old. I plucked at the tiny nylon strings and toted it with me everywhere, often dragging it to the dinner table while I ate. A plastic drum set soon accompanied my favorite toy. I did not know that music would someday save my life; that even after befriending some of the most prestigious singers in the world, the very songs I’d written would become the soundtrack for my pain.

I was born in Ogdensburg, New Jersey, a small rural town of 1,300 people. My sister Jessy arrived two and a half years later, just three days before Christmas. While my mother labored down the hall, my father ushered me into the hospital waiting room, where a decorative Christmas tree stood in the corner. He scooped me up and let me gently touch the shiny balls that dangled from the branches. I leaned against the warmth of his soft, large hands, my eyes wide with awe as his masculine fingers stretched toward the tree. It would be one of the last times I would ever feel safe in his arms.

Long before I arrived, my family’s heritage was marked with tragedy, perseverance and triumph. My mother’s parents were both Jewish Holocaust survivors, their love story a flickering spark in the midst of chilling circumstances. While suffering in German concentration camps, their eyes briefly met, and the bleakness disappeared. After escaping the camp, my grandfather got into the business of cutting hair. One day, a customer told him he’d seen his true love in Poland. My grandfather paid the man to go to Poland and bring my grandmother back to Germany. The man did as he requested, and my grandparents got married that very day. They arrived at Ellis Island, New York and settled in Brooklyn. Within a year, my grandfather learned fluent English. He then went on to start what would become one of the most successful barber shops in Brooklyn.

My father’s upbringing was wrought with tragedy as well. His father was a disturbed man who had discovered his own father hanging to death in his kitchen when he was a child. He attempted suicide several times himself to escape what haunted him, often landing in mental institutions. It was into this dark world that my father was born.

When he was 16, my father’s father retired in Florida and abandoned him at his grandmother’s house. Forced to support himself, my father delivered medical supplies by bicycle and eventually saved up enough money to put himself through computer programming school. He met my mother through a mutual friend, and her home became a place of refuge for him. My mother helped him with his homework, while her parents cooked him dinner at night.

When my father asked for my mother’s hand in marriage, her father was hesitant. He knew of the dysfunction my father had come from and was convinced my father had an attitude and a temper. He was also concerned my father lacked roots and would not be able to provide for my mother. But he relented and agreed to pay for the whole wedding. However, when my father learned certain guests he’d invited to the nuptials were not invited, he lost his temper with my mother’s father. Though generally a calm man, my grandfather deftly knocked my father to the ground, issuing him the surprise of his life. Years later, after tasting the sting of my father’s wrath, I’d admire my grandfather for that gutsy move.

As a very young boy, I decided it was my father who loved me best. Though he often expressed his affection with words of endearment and hugs, my mother was much more reserved. On a few occasions, she let me pick out an action figure I’d been pining for at a local toy store called Mars.

“Now don’t tell your father I caved in and bought it for you,” she whispered.

For a moment, she won me over. I liked knowing we shared a secret, just the two of us. But her affection was sparse. Though she often told me she loved me, she rarely doled out hugs. I stuck close by my father’s side, hoping, as most any little boy does, that I’d follow in his footsteps and be just like him someday.

Growing up as the only Jewish kid in a small town, I quickly learned that the world could be cruel and unfair. I watched with envy as the presents piled up under the neighbors’ Christmas trees, disappointed with the measly basketball Hanukkah brought my way. Against Jewish tradition, my mother put up a tree of our own so we wouldn’t feel left out.

“Christmas is centered around Jesus, and we don’t believe in him,” she reminded me.

Innocently, I replied, “Well, I believe in Jesus.” And at that, she had nothing to say.

Just before I started first grade, the board of education decided I could not attend the local school. Jews, as far as they were concerned, were of the Devil. My mother marched me before a panel of folks and showed them a Menorah, trying to explain our Jewish traditions as they scratched their heads. At last, they agreed to let me attend school, and thus began my miseries.

“Hey, you kike!” the kids at school called out, throwing sneers my way on the playground.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and tried to ignore them. When they marched up and punched me in the face, I held back the tears and walked away. I was not a fighter, but their words stung all the same, and a dark cloud followed me all the way home.

One day, my father and I walked into a lawn mower shop.

“I heard you’re a Jew,” said the owner, glaring at my father from behind the counter. "We don’t serve Jews in here.”

We left, and at that moment, I realized my father was a misfit with a dark cloud of his own. We didn’t belong in this town.

Though I soon outgrew the little plastic guitar and drum set, I remained fascinated by music. One day, my friend across the street invited me over. His brother had a shiny full size black drum set in the garage, and it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I sat on the stool, my little legs dangling over the edge, and banged away. We made up songs on hot summer afternoons, and I imagined what it might be like to be in a real band. We then hunkered in his bedroom, studying the latest album covers. I was mesmerized by the artistic edge of the album covers, drawn to the outfits, logos, personalities, colors and entertainment elements displayed on them. Who were these larger than life people staring back at me?

Ozzy Osbourne’s Bark at the Moon cover especially intrigued me. Dressed and posed like a wolf in full make-up, he was more than just a singer or a songwriter-he was an actor, a fearless artist and a visionary, creating his own personality through his costumes. At 9 years old, I didn’t know much, but I did know there was something magical about music, and I wanted more.

I continued to navigate the prejudiced streets of my little town, confused by the division between my family and our neighbors. But two hours away, in the bustling city of Brooklyn, no one cared if I was a Jew. I lived for the summers, when my sister and I could escape to my grandparents’ place for a month. As my father drove toward their house, I curled up in the passenger seat, laid my head on his thigh and drifted off to sleep. His warmth comforted me, and it occurred to me that this was how it should be-a boy, safe beside his father, protected and loved. But this warmth would someday disappear, and those hands that once held me would soon become what I feared most.

The moment I walked into my grandparents’ house, I felt completely at ease. The place was filled with antique furniture and always smelled like mothballs. I spent time watching television in my grandfather’s den with him, sneaking nuts from the little crystal dish next to his recliner. At night, I slept in my mother’s childhood room, surrounded by that same warmth I felt in my father’s arms. On the wall was a pencil drawing of a clown that my mother had created as a child. I loved lying in bed and looking at the old photos of her on the wall, imaging what she must have been like at my age. Several barber chairs sat in the basement, and clients often came to my grandfather’s house for a haircut. My cousins lived upstairs, and we played ball in the fenced-in backyard. The place represented solace and security, two things I would struggle to find later in life.

My grandfather was a handsome, kind man who never once raised his voice. At night, before dinner, he recited several Jewish prayers and read from the Old Testament while we all listened. Aside from my family’s annual trip to the Jewish temple, I didn’t know much about God. But somehow, my grandfather made him come alive. I didn’t mind the boring parts he shared, as being in his presence was exciting enough. His blue eyes sparkled as he glanced over at my grandmother.It was obvious he adored her. I remembered the strained tones between my parents back home and tried to recall the last time I’d seen my father look at my mother like that.

Though he owned a car, my grandfather chose to walk the six miles into the city to run his shop each day. When I was old enough to make the trek myself, he invited me to come along. Though I could hardly drag myself out of the covers at home, I bounded out of bed before the sun rose to join my grandfather on his way to work. We left at 5 a.m. and trudged along the road, past the suburban houses and into the city, just the two of us, chatting about life. If storm clouds rolled in, my grandfather simply popped open his umbrella and marched on. Nothing would stop him from showing up for his customers.

As we walked side by side, my grandfather told me fascinating and elaborate tales about a...