Lisa Hoffman and Charles Atkins

Published September 23rd, 2004

Charlie Writes:

"We unburied your record player and listened to some of your vinyl," I tell Lisa, who’s nursing a badly swollen knee, which has delayed her homecoming from the rehab center. "You’ve got an amazing record collection."

Dressed in leopard print, and wearing a pair of black cat earrings she needles me, "Did you really listen? Did you know how to turn the thing on?"

I give her a dirty look. "We listened to Harry Belafonte Sings the Blues—what a great singer."

"You know I interviewed him when he was making a movie called The Angel Levine with…oh what’s his name? The guy who was in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

"Mel Brooks?"

"No…the one who played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof."

"Zero Mostel."

"That’s the one. I remember that between every take I tried to interview each of the actors. And when I got to Zero, I asked something really stupid, and said, ‘that was a dumb blonde question’. After that, every time they took a break he’d go around shouting, ‘where’s the dumb blonde?’ And somewhere I have a record that’s signed by Salvador Dali. He was doing a book signing at Doubleday. Only I didn’t want to spend all that money on his book, so I bought a record for which he’d designed the cover and I had him sign it…Now he was someone who was always doing crazy things for publicity. Like lying in bed in the bookshop window with an electronic devise attached to his wrist and a television screen over his head. And every time he signed an autograph it created a pattern like an electrocardiogram, which he’d give that to the people that bought his book; it was very odd."

"Did it help his sales?"

"I don’t know. Maybe you should do something like that when your next book comes out?" She suggests.

"I don’t think so. Were you working as a publicist then?"

"No...that came later. Did you find my 78’s?"

"I think they’re in your storage bin," I offer, picturing a stack of old book-style albums.

"I brought those back from England. They’re from the war." She gets very quiet.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Those records…they belonged to my first boyfriend, Fred. I was twenty and he was…older. We used to listen to them and dance. Sometimes, and this might sound strange--or foolhardy--when the air-raid sirens would go off, we wouldn’t go down to the bomb shelter. Instead, we’d have the blackout curtains drawn and listen to music—like Adelina Pati or Melizia Korjus, singing the Spring Voices Waltz and we’d dance."

"That sounds nice," and I make a mental note to retrieve the fragile and heavy 78’s and see if they’re still playable.

"It was an escape," she continues, "and if the bombs got too close, we’d turn off the phonograph and run down to the shelter beneath his building, where we’d all sit in deck chairs and try to get some sleep, or play bridge while drinking hot tea out of Thermoses. You know, with all of these hurricanes in Florida, I can understand why some people won’t evacuate. Sometimes, even though it’s not the smartest thing, you don’t want to leave your home."

"You’re ready to get out of here," I say, realizing there’s more to her statement.

"Yes. As good as this place is, I want to go home; it’s been a long time. And I’m tired of writing about the medical saga of Miss Lisa Hoffman. Let’s talk about something else."

"Agreed…" I say, realizing how burnt out we’ve both become with the lengthy process of rehab and recovery. "We listened to a Marlene Dietrich album, it has a great cover, but she sounds terrible."

"Some people considered that kind of singing sexy. I never much cared for it."

"On the other hand, you have some Bessie Smith that’s wonderful, and maybe I’m just nostalgic," I say, "but there’s something powerful in the scratchiness of the old recordings."

"Let’s write about that?" she says. "You know the different viewpoints the new technologies, the differences between CDs and records. And how every time the technology changes, you gain something, but maybe lose something, as well."

"Like with your records, how many of those artists will never make it onto CDs? I don’t even own a record player, although I still have all the singles from my Cousin Emily. When we were kids, we’d listen to the Beatles, the Monkees and the Zombies over and over on a monograph player while dancing like maniacs in the basement. Playing your records was probably the first time in twenty years that I had to go through the process of lowering the needle and hearing the sound of it spin with that faint crackling before the music starts."

"There’s something now more than the CD…something newer. What do you call it?" she asks.

"MP3 files? IPods?"

"I guess. I sometimes wonder that if we don’t preserve the past with its scratchiness and nostalgia, do we go to something that’s beautiful, but sterile? With certain records I loved, they’d get a skip, but we’d play it anyway and wait for the skip, and then stomp on the floor to move the needle along. It’s sad but in the past few years I haven’t listened to any of my records."

"Well, they’re now dusted off and ready to go."

"I’m looking forward to that," she says, and once again the thing we’re avoiding—the nebulousness of her discharge date--has entered the room

"You know," I say, steering us back into the pleasant world of avoidance, "in my basement I have hundreds of Edison cylinders that we inherited."

"The kind you have to wind up?"

"They look like canisters, and there are people on them like Al Jolson, Caruso, even some minstrel show singers. But we don’t have a player."

"You should get one," she says.

"I nearly bought one at a tag sale, but thought it was kind of silly to spend the money. But after this, I think I need to track one down."

"I’d love to hear them. Would you bring them over when I get out of here?"

"Of course. I bet I can find a player on EBay."

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