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The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Ravioli, and The Monk
00:55:51
Christian McBride, a jazz bassist, is put to the test by his idol, Freddie Hubbard; writer Adam Gopnik details his daughter’s cosmopolitan imaginary friend; and a down and out comic considers ending it all until the universe sends him an unlikely sign.
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- [00:00]
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Dan Kennedy
Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. This week we're bringing you a full hour of Moth stories from our Moth Radio Hour right here on the podcast. We're gonna go back into the archives a little bit, bring you some classics from storytellers Christian McBride. Really sweet story from Christian, Adam Gopnik and one of our all time favorites, Mike DiStefano. The Moth's artistic director, Kathryn Burns is going to lead us through that show. Here's Kathryn.
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Kathryn Burns
From prx. This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Kathryn Burns, artistic director of the Moth and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is true stories, personal stories told live without notes. We have three stories this hour. Musician Christian McBride tries desperately not to blow his dream gig. Writer Adam Gopnik worries about his little girl's peculiar imaginary friend. And comic Mike DeStefano encounters a Tibetan monk in West Palace, Palm Beach, Florida. Our first story is from Jazz bassist Christian McBride. He first told this story for us at a special event we did in an apartment on the 57th floor of a skyscraper. He was standing in front of a baby grand piano that was made of clear plastic so as not to spoil the view. He's a cigar lover and told the story with an unlit cigar in his hand for courage. Here's Christian McBride, still clutching a cigar still, but this time at Cooper Union in New York City.
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Christian McBride
Thank you very much. I'm here to share a story with you about a man who was a jazz legend, someone I had the great honor and privilege to work with very early in my career. That's the late, great trumpet player Freddie Hubbard. He's here for Freddie. I was born and raised in Philadelphia and growing up. Thank you again, jazz musicians of my generation. Our number one hero, the person who we all wanted to play with more than anyone else was Art Blakey. We wanted to be a member of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Every great jazz musician since the 50s played with art Blakey from Freddie Hubbard, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Winton Marsalis. Winton and Branford Marsalis, Wayne Shorter, they all play with Art Blakey. So as a teenager, I had my wish list of people I wanted to play with. Art Blakey was unquestionably number one. Number two was up for grabs. But that was answered the first time I saw Freddie Hubbard perform live. It was in the summer of 1987 in Philly. And I had grown up going to a lot of rhythm and blues shows, a lot of gospel shows. So I knew what that intensity, that. That fervor, that drama was in the music and the stage art of these great soul and gospel performers. I never quite got that with a jazz performance. Too many times with jazz concerts you leave going. I think I liked it because it got you here, but not here all the time. First time I saw Freddie Hubbard, it was the jazz equivalent of James Brown. He might as well have gotten on his knees with his trumpet and had a guy come and put a cape on his back. But that excitement, every time he would take a trumpet solo, the whole audience would just start screaming, like anything you could ever imagine. Freddie Hubbard quickly became number two on my list. I moved here to New York in 1989, and as fate would have it, some of my closest friends, my quickest friends that I made, were a beautiful drummer named Carl Allen, pianist named Benny Green, and a saxophonist named Don Braden. Just by chance, they were all in Freddie Hubbard's band at that time. Art Blakey had just changed to what was to become his final band. So I missed the opportunity to play with Art Blakey. I got to see him, but I never got to play with him. So at that point, I started looking at number two. And I would always very. At least I thought I was being sly and subtle. I would ask Carl, say, carl.
- [07:22]
Apple Watch Advertiser
Who.
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Christian McBride
Plays bass with Freddie when his regular bass player can't make it? Carl started looking at me like, I got you. I said, yeah, well, who does the gig? He said, well, whoever's available. Great. A few months later would go by, hey, Benny, Freddie doesn't need a sub yet, does he? Don't worry, we got you covered. Every time I would mention Freddie Hubbard, Don, Benny, Carl, they wouldn't give up anything. Finally, Carl calls me. I'm a student of Juilliard at this point. And Carl calls me up and he says, Listen, McBride, I have a very bizarre gig for you. It's in Columbia, South Carolina, and we're going to be the house rhythm section for the Budweiser jazz expl. And if you ever saw that in the late 80s and early 90s, it was rarely jazz. He says, we're going to play behind Noel Pointer, Gene Karn, Loni Liston Smith, and Freddie. That's all I heard. Freddie. This was probably my intro, you know, to see if Freddie would like me well enough to maybe call me to sub for his regular bass player. So we go down to Columbia, South Carolina. The gig was at a place, I kid you not, called the Plantation they built a stage in front of a big white house. I'm not lying to you. And we played this gig. Freddie Hubbard was very much an alpha male. He was a man with a huge spirit, very macho kind of guy. Almost had, like a mob boss mentality. Just to be a good musician wasn't enough. You also had to be a man. And so Freddie was very dramatic. He didn't make the rehearsal, didn't make the sound check, just showed up for the gig. So I'm in the dressing room, I'm in the trailer, actually, and I'm just shaking in my shoes. And Carl says, hey, Freddie, this is Christian McBride, and I was 17 at the time. And Freddie just kind of looks at me saying, yeah, nice to meet you. We go on stage and we play. And to hear his horn up close like that, I almost had a heart attack. I thought, oh, my God, I'm playing with Freddie Hubbard. I can't believe this gig is over. I'm thinking to myself, God, I hope I made some sort of impression on Freddy something. Freddie turns around after the gig, as always, says, nice meeting you. Gets in his limo, goes back to the hotel. Guess he didn't dig it, but I know I'll see him again. I'll know I'll see him again. I knew all of Freddie's music got together with Carl and Benny and would always try to ask what songs they were playing. So if I ever got the call, I'd be ready. Three months later, I get the call. Carl says, mcbride, we need a bass player for Freddie's gig in Chicago. You ready? I went. You have no idea how ready I am. We fly to Chicago. The gig was at the South Shore Jazz Festival, and there's Don and Benny and Carl there to support me. And I don't expect Freddie to remember me from South Carolina, because obviously that I made no impression. Freddie comes in the dressing room with about five people, big entourage, coat draped over his back, sunglasses, guy carrying his trumpet. He comes in and greets the band members loudly, hey, what's up? Gives everybody a hug. And he gets to me. I don't have sunglasses. I just have these. He looks at me and he goes, this must be the bass player something. Yes, Benny Green, bless his heart. He comes over, he says, freddie, this is Christian McBride, man. You're going to love him, man. I swear, he knows every song you've ever written. He is so ready. He's going to knock you out. You just wait. Freddie pulls his glasses halfway down and looks at me and says, you know My shit, huh? Yes, sir, Mr. Hubbard. I know every song you've ever written. I'm ready. He pushes his glasses back up and says, we'll see. We go out, play the gig. I am not lying to you. Freddie did not acknowledge me one bit on this concert. Freddie would go during the saxophone solo. Freddie would stand there, and he kind of watch Don and go, yeah, yeah, you sound good, baby. Piano solo. He'd turn and look at Benny go and pat him on the back. After the solo's over, bass solo, he leaves. Now I'm trying to follow him to see where he's going. Maybe he's. He. You know, maybe he just doesn't want to give me too much dap, you know, he's just gonna go behind the stage and watch me. Doesn't want to make me nervous. I follow him. He lights up a cigarette, starts talking to the sound guy, paying no attention to me at all. Oh, wow, this is bad. He comes back, we play about three more songs. No acknowledgement. Doesn't even look at me, doesn't introduce me, know nothing. I said, okay, this is. In this case, I'm guessing it's probably strike two in the end. I'm not going to get a third opportunity. Last song of the night comes. I take another big, long bass solo. Freddie, he's out in the audience doing something. My heart is down here. You know, I'm thinking, well, at least I could tell my friends I made one gig with Freddie Hubbard, you know, whatever. So he comes back, we're vamping out, and Freddie now is introducing the band. Said. Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear from our saxophone player, Mr. Tom Braden. Mr. Benny Green, our pianist, our drummer, and straw boss, Mr. Carl Allen. Looks and goes. This bass player here, he just turned 18 years old a couple months ago. He don't think I remember, but we played together in South Carolina a few months ago, and he. He's playing his ass off tonight. How about it for my new bass player, Mr. Christian McBride? And I could have won $10 million. I'm on stage, just like. And it was so sweet because Benny and Don and Carl, they also kind of openly went, yes. After the gig was over, I was like, thanks, Mr. Hubbard. I appreciate it. He gives me a big hug. And our next gig was in Detroit. He was like, I'll see you in Detroit. And for the next three years, I had the most amazing time being in this band. And Freddie passed away three years ago. So God bless Freddie Hubbard, and thank you.
- [15:28]
Kathryn Burns
That was Christian McBride. Christian's played with Sting, James Brown, Isaac Hayes and the Roots. His most recent CD is Kind of Brown. To see pictures of Christian and Freddie Hubbard, visit themoth.org while you're there, you can sign up for our free weekly podcast or keep up with the Moth news on our blog. All of the stories in this hour are also available at the iTunes store. Just search for the best of the Moth In a moment we'll have a story about seeing New York City through the eyes of a three year old girl.
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Mike DeStefano
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange.
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Kathryn Burns
That's GoToMeeting.com this is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. Katherine I'm Kathryn Burns. Next we have a story from the New Yorker staff writer Adam Gottnik. Before we hear his story, here's what Adam had to say about how telling stories on stage has affected his writing.
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Apple Watch Advertiser
I sensed in myself that I had become, in some ways, and doubtless still am in every way, an unduly fancy writer, that is, that the sort of the curlicues and ornamentations of erudition had begun to drown out my ability to simply tell a tale about what had happened. But I think, you know, writing is a business of perfection. You want every sentence to be as perfectly polished as you can possibly make it. Every sentence should glow and shine and have its own little balance and structure and charm. A story's not like that. A story can tolerate a lot of rough stuff in the course of its being related. As long as what's being related is significant, you can't write that way. Readers are not forgiving of imperfection. But don't you think listeners are totally unforgiving of insincerity?
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Kathryn Burns
Absolutely. Adam told this story at our annual gala, which we call the Mothball. We were honoring Calvin Trillin that night, and Adam paid homage to him with this story. Story here's Adam Gopnik live at the Mothball.
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Apple Watch Advertiser
Thank You. Thank you. The story I want to tell you tonight is actually sort of dedicated to a couple of people. One is to my wonderful daughter Olivia, who's sitting with me tonight, who's 11 years old and a very grown up and beautiful girl. And she's given me permission to tell this story, though she's policing it and is the fact checking department as well. And the other person is the special honoree tonight, Calvin Trillin. Because it was Trillin really, who back in the 1970s wrote all of these wonderful pieces about family life in New York that convinced all of us in Milwaukee and New Mexico and in Canada in my case, that New York would be a wonderful place to come and make a family, raise a family. And so we all came and we ruined the city by our arrival as we all poured in and Trillin was the magnet who drew us. We came and then we left. My wife and I left New York for several years. We lived abroad, we lived in France, and we decided we would come home just 10 years ago in the year 2000, for a lot of reasons, but essentially because we wanted to see our children grow up here in New York City. We wanted them to have not the experience the kids have growing up in Paris, where every child at 4:30 when school is finished looks like a Democrat. They look completely beaten and depressed and kind of dog eared and enormous circles under their eyes and they've been beaten and abused for the last nine hours and they have no idea how to respond to the force of unappeasable authority at every moment. We wanted them to have that kind of light footed, spring hearted sense of ownership that New York children seem to us to have. So we came back to be in New York so that they would have a childhood in New York, so, so that they would be able to be part of New York. And then of course, we had just come back when the greatest tragedy in the city's history happened. And a long shadow spread out over every life and I think maybe particularly over the lives of parents with small children as we wondered if we should stay in New York, if New York was the right place for us to be and the right place really for us to bring up our children. And it was just about at that moment when we were all full of doubt, as I suspect many of you were as well. And my wife Martha would put on my pillow night after night, brochures from real estate in Connecticut and houses in New Jersey, and even things clipped from the paper about the farthest reaches of Brooklyn. It was just at about that time that my daughter Olivia, who was three then, told us that she had an imaginary friend, and that this imaginary friend's name was Charlie Ravioli. And at first, Charlie Ravioli seemed like a terrifically attractive Manhattan kind of character. He lived at the corner of Lexington and Madison, which seemed like a great neighborhood. And he lived, Olivier explained, on grilled chicken and water, sort of like a fashion model or an imaginary friend. And it was a great New York diet. We knew a lot of people who lived on exactly that. But then something a little disturbing or a little concerning began to happen. Olivia would be on her cell phone. You know, we gave her one of those toy cell phones that they had then. And she would be talking on it, and we would hear her say, hello, Wavioli. Wavioli. Okay, call me when you get in. And she would hang it up, and she would turn to us and say, I always get his machine. And we realized that she had invented an imaginary friend who was always too busy to play with her. She had an invisible playmate whose salient characteristic was that he was too busy to play. And she would come every night to the table at dinner, and everyone would recite the things that had happened through the day. And we'd turn to Olivia, and she'd say, oh, I bumped into Charlie Ravioli today. We grabbed a cappuccino, but then he had to run. Or she'd say, I bumped into Charlie Ravioli today. She would say, we got into a taxi, but then he had a meeting, so he had to go. Turned out Charlie was working in television in those years. That's how Olivia explained it. But she actually would say, he's working on a television. And we can never figure out if he was a talk show host, sort of like Charlie Rose, or if he was a guy in the electronics business with a little repair shop someplace in Queens. But that was what Ravioli did, and he was always too busy to play with her. Now, I should explain, of course, that Olivia, at that moment in her life, had no life where she was bumping into people, had no life where she was grabbing cappuccinos. She was simply kind of expressing and imitating the world that she heard all around her, and particularly that she heard from her mother. Every night when we would come to the table, and I would say to her mother, how was your day? And her mother would say, oh, you know, it was one of those days. You know, I bumped into Meg downtown, and we grabbed a coffee. But then I had a cell phone message from Emily, but we couldn't Connect. So we came back uptown and on and on and on. A whole history of miscommunication that had enveloped eight hours. And Olivia was taking that in. She had one person in her life who was out there in the world. Her older brother Luke was exactly five years older than she is to the day, which tells you more than you really want to know. And. And every day at the end of the day, they would sit down together for cookies and milk. When Luke came back from school, after Olivia had spent a day at the Central Park Zoo taking naps, doing the things that three year olds do, and she would say, luca, how was your day? And he would say, okay. Luke, did the teacher like your essay? Yeah, I guess. Luke, what did you have for lunch? Sandwich, I guess. Luke, how was my day? The basic rhythm of man and woman gets set at about the ages of 7 and 2 and never alters throughout a lifetime. Well, Charlie Ravioli seemed to us like such a strange character that I decided I would call. I have five sisters. I have five sisters. When the moths would come on, they all have PhDs, they all teach in universities somewhere or other. When the moths used to come onto our porch, they would dissect them and figure out exactly what genus that they belong to. And one of my sisters is a developmental psychologist out in Berkeley. And I called her up because it seemed a little strange to me to have an imaginary friend who was always too busy to play with you. And I wondered if this was like something that came up a lot in the psychological literature. So I called her and said, listen, my daughter, you know, Olivia has got this imaginary friend, but she's always trying to connect with him, Never can. Always too busy to play with her. And she said, oh, that's completely normal. That's completely normal. Because children make their imaginary friends out of whatever experience they have at hand. If they're living on mountaintops, they have imaginary friends who are made of clouds. If they live by the seashore, their imaginary friends are waves. So what could be more normal than that? Her imaginary friend growing up in Manhattan would be always too busy, would be a creature of interrupted occasions, of constantly occluded connections. Makes perfect sense. The kids understand that these imaginary friends are fictional. You have absolutely nothing to worry about. So I told my wife that, and I said, we have nothing to worry about. Completely normal. Every child in New York has a busy imaginary friend. So it seemed that this was going to be okay. But then a new character arrived in the story. We would listen to Olivia talking on her little cell phone and we heard her talking to someone called Laurie. Someone called Laurie. She would say, hello, Laurie.
- [27:15]
Kathryn Burns
Hello.
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Apple Watch Advertiser
Is Ravioli there? No. Okay. And at first we thought. At first we thought, you see, that Laurie was sort of the Linda Tripp of the whole Ravioli operation, that she was the person you spoke to when Ravioli was ignoring you, the big creep that he obviously was. And you sort of confided in Linda Tripp that she was recording your conversations and so on. But then we listened more carefully and we realized who Laurie really was. Laurie was Ravioli's assistant. She was Charlie Ravioli's assistant. She was the person on the phone who tells you, I'm sorry, Mr. Ravioli is in a meeting. He'll try and get back to you as soon as he can. And Martha turned to me and said, this is wrong. This is really wrong. I don't know. I'm not a child psychologist, but I know that imaginary friends should not have assistance. They should not have agents, they should not have personal trainers. Imaginary friends should not have people. They should play with the child who imagined them. That is their role in life. Not to be surrounded by an entourage who prevents the child who thought them up in the first place from ever actually playing with them. So I called my sister and said, ravioli has an assistant who's answering his phone now. Would you describe this as normal? And she said, this never occurs in the psychological literature. And I said, oh, so you think we should look into it? And she said, no, I think you should move. But then something very strange, something very interesting began to happen. Olivia didn't seem to get any closer to Charlie Ravioli. She didn't seem to come any nearer to actually having the play dates and the good times with him that it seemed to us that she deserved. But every day she would report to us at the end of the day that she had gone out into the world in search of Charlie Ravioli, and something amazing had happened to her. She had gone out looking for Charlie Ravioli, and she had ended up in the zoo, and she had released all the animals from the zoo and they had had a dance. She'd gone out looking for Charlie Ravioli. She came home and told us one day, about a day, of course, when she spent it entirely inside, watching Caillou on television and taking a nap. She had gone out in search of Charlie Ravioli on the streets of Manhattan, and the taxi driver had had a heart attack, and she'd gotten into the front seat of the taxi and driven through the city throughout the day. She'd gone looking for Charlie Ravioli downtown somewhere. And she had ended up telling jokes in a nightclub with a microphone. And we realized that Charlie Ravioli, for her was truly the prince of the city. He was the prince of our disorder. He was the representative of the spirit of New York, which is always the spirit of attainment. It's always the spirit of the thing that lies before us, is always the place that we haven't quite quite got to yet, but we'll get to someday. Ravioli wasn't, we realized, just an incarnation of the insane busyness and misconnections she saw around us. He was also her hero, her demigod, her fictional version of the endless possibilities in New York, which always lay just around the corner and on the other side of a cappuccino. And so in those years when we were all asking ourselves, should we leave New York? Should we go out of New York, when I was being bombarded with real estate literature from Connecticut, where all writers go and become alcoholics and write bad autobiographical plays, I knew. I knew that we could stay in New York because I understood that all we really wanted from this city. And I could say to my wife whenever she suggested that we leave, all we wanted was to go on bumping into Charlie Ravioli as long and as often as we possibly can. Thank you so much.
- [31:36]
Kathryn Burns
That was Adam Gottner. Adam has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1986. He's author of Paris to the Moon. Through the Children's Gate and the Table Comes Family, France and the Meaning of Food. An earlier Adams story involves his relationship with his son Luke. And we talked about the complications of telling stories about your family. How does your family feel about being like characters, if you will, in your work?
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Apple Watch Advertiser
I have written less and less about them, about the children, certainly, as they've gotten older and older. Now I tend to be more reserved about it. When they're really little, in a sense, their experience belongs to you or you share it with them in the simple physical sense that everything they do, you do too. But in the moral sense as well, that you're so engaged with their experience that you're part of it, complicit in it. As they get older, more and more of what happens to them happens to them. It's their story to tell, and someday they will. I think their bitter memoirs are well underway already. In fact, they already have titles for their bitter memoirs.
- [32:44]
Kathryn Burns
That was Adam Gopnik. Maybe you have stories about your kids or yourself that you'd like to tell at the Moth call. Our Pitch Hotline. Hundreds of people have called and left one to two minute summaries of their own stories for us to hear. Here's a recent pitch we My story's.
- [32:59]
Adam Gopnik
Called Watch your prize. Back in 2002, I had a blues club restaurant that wasn't making any money. I was broke, my wife was seven months pregnant, and I was very close to fulfilling a childhood fantasy of mine becoming a race car driver. I had my race car almost completed. I only needed one key component this time. A lady friend of mine leased my blues club for a bachelorette party. She couldn't get any male strippers to come out of town that far, so she offered me and some of the regulars a certain amount of money to run through the party naked. My story is about what it's like before you do something you're really uncomfortable doing, what it's like during the act of doing something you're really uncomfortable doing, and how you live with the aftermath of it all. Thank you.
- [33:53]
Kathryn Burns
Remember, you can pitch us your own story@themost.org or by calling 877-799-6684. You may get a call back from us inviting you to develop your own story with one of our directors and tell it at a live Moth event. Please call. We really love hearing your stories. Again, the number is 877-799-9668. When we come back, a man in a hospital with double pneumonia gets a call that his wife has been admitted to the ER downstairs.
- [34:39]
Mike DeStefano
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange.
- [34:46]
Blinds.com Advertiser
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- [35:26]
Kathryn Burns
I'm Kathryn Burns, artistic director of the Moth. Our last story is from the late comedian Mike destefano. Mike was a finalist in the show Last Comic Standing and also appeared on Late night with Conan O'Brien and in his own Comedy Central special. Mike was from the South Bronx and had the gruff demeanor to go with it. He was openly HIV positive, and his comedy was not for sissies. Much of his humor came from talking about the years he spent addicted to heroin.
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Mike DeStefano
I actually was a drug counselor for a long time, and before that I was a drug addict, and before that I was 10. So, yeah, that's my resume for anyone.
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Kathryn Burns
Here's Mike DeStefano live at the mall.
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Mike DeStefano
Hi, everybody. Just want to say it's an honor to share the stage with such amazing human beings. Thank you so much. My story's about. Well, when I was a kid, I had a spark in me. You know, like, I was always a happy kid. I always had a little bit of a flame going and nothing could really knock it out. You know, it was a beaten by my father, and my mother wasn't around much, and I went to Catholic school. None of that. None of that. The nuns couldn't extinguish the flame that dwelled inside of me. They tried. I was 28 years old. I was living in West Palm Beach, Florida, and I was walking around in the Winn Dixie supermarket, and I'm shopping, and I got. I felt this, like, weird feeling come over me. And then I fainted. Well, I blacked out. Just went into a blackout. And that's happened to me before, but it was on purpose with drugs. This time it was a little scary. I just knew something was wrong. And, you know, I was in and out of consciousness. I did get in an ambulance. I ended up. I'm in a hospital now. I'm in Palm Beach Gardens Hospital. And I'm laying there and I got machine like a tube in my nose. And I'm just. I'm in this incredible pain and can't really move much. And what the problem was was I had pneumonia. I had double lobal pneumonia in all five of the lobes. There's only four lobes. That's why it's funny. I'm a comedian. You know, I'm going to tell jokes here. And there's. So I'm laying there and I was just. I was like. So for a minute, I was really concerned about myself, which was weird because I hadn't had that experience of worrying about myself for a few years because at home, my wife was dying of aids and she was really sick, obviously, and she had. They didn't have diagnosis for women years ago when they had aids. They just called it wasting syndrome. So whatever that is, is what she had. You know, she didn't have a specific thing, but everything was just Falling apart. And all I could think about is, I got to get out of this hospital. I got to get home and take care of her, you know, because that's all I did, was take care of my wife. That was my life, my job. And I loved it. It wasn't a problem. I loved it. You know, people would say, how do you deal with it? How do you ask a question like that? Like, have you ever loved somebody? You know, it was weird to me. So I just was, like, laying there, and the phone rings, and my friend Jimmy calls me and he says, mike, Franny was in a car accident. And I said, no, she's. She can't even walk. She's on so much morphine, there's no way, you know, why. He goes, yeah, she got in the car. And I believed it because I knew her. She was drug addict. We were former drug addicts, recovering people. So drug. Like, if you cut my leg off, I would be upset. But if you gave me heroin right afterwards, I'd be, eh, I can handle it, you know, I'll be all right, you know. So even though she was suffering with AIDS and going through all this horrible stuff, the morphine helped her feel better, like, she would, you know, be okay. And I just couldn't. And she probably just thought, hey, I can drive. And she tried to. And the car flipped over. He told me several times, and I knew she was dead, you know, So I laid back, and I was just like, wow. And I had these Buddhist rosaries because I'm from the Bronx. I was sort of between religions at the time, if anybody knows what I'm talking about. Well, I needed something, you know, I couldn't. Because quite honestly, you know, my life, you know, the drugs and the tragedy and people dying that I loved, and most of all, my wife being so sick after being off of drugs for so long, and really us trying to get our lives together, you know, it just seemed really unfair, you know? And all I could think about, about a God was the one that I was told as a kid, you know, God's watching. He knows. So I figured that the God who's doing this to me and my wife, you know, I'm not going to pray to him, you know, hey, can you. What am I going to say? Can you help me? I was like, what the fuck are you doing? You know, it's like, get off the fence, make a move. You know, kill us or help us do something. So that wasn't really working for me. So I went to this Buddhist place because I saw an ad in the paper, Buddhism. So I'm like, let me just see what. And it was a guy just sitting there. They just sit there, these people. And there's no nails or blood or anything. So I felt. I was like, I can do that. I probably can do that sitting stuff there. So I walk into this place and I. I hear. I'm in the. You know, they told me to take my shoes on. Take my. You know, it's like, brought from abroad. Take my shoes off. And then I saw everyone else had their shoes off, so I took my shoes off. And that was all they really asked, you know, and they were just nice people, you know, they were very sweet and kind and compassion. They had a lot of compassion. That's what they do. They try to get compassion. These people here, we call it codependency and charge you money to get rid of it. So that's it. No one else got that one. All right. So thank you. So, yeah, so this woman says to me, really sweet, kind darling. She said, would you like to see the llama? So I'm thinking, there's an animal somewhere, like a sheep type of thing, whatever. So I said, what's the llama? So she said, no, it's a Tibetan priest. The holy. I said, when she said the word priest, I immediately thought of scary priest. So I go into the room and I'm like, you know, I don't know about anyone else, but if I was in church kneeling, if my knees didn't hurt, I was in trouble, you know, I was like, your knees have to hurt in order to be really praying right? You know, there's none of this comfort shit, you know what I mean? So I walk in there to meet this guy, and he's just sitting. He's this little man bent over, and he's like, oh, money about me. Oh, money about me. Oh, money about me. Oh, money. And I'm like, what's he doing? She goes, he just prays and meditates. He's been doing that since he escaped Tibet with his family. And he just does that for 20 some odd hours a day. Like 21 hours a day. And then he eats and goes to sleep for an hour. Who the fuck's paying for this? I want to know. Is this guy getting federal assistance? Are my tax dollars paying for this guy? Like, this is all I can come up with in. So I'm so. So. So the woman says, well, come. Come sit near him. And, you know, so I actually got on my knees, you know, like a Catholic. Good Catholic. And I'm like on my knees. And she says, no, relax, relax.
- [43:38]
Apple Watch Advertiser
And.
- [43:38]
Mike DeStefano
And he looks at me and he couldn't speak any English, but he said. He said, oh, West Palm Beach. Thank you. Thank you. So she. I said, what is. She said, well, he's just letting you know that you're in West Palm Beach. And he's saying, thank you for being there. You know, it's a simple thing. So I'm like, am I going to go to hell another if I don't sit right? So I'm sitting there and he puts his hands out. He said, oh, put your hands out. She was excited that he put his hands out to me. She said, oh, put your hands out. So I put my hands out and he took my hands. And when he touched me, I tell you, I felt like so relaxed, you know, And I was like, I was just there in the moment and just so relaxed. And I wasn't scared. And pain, all the pain went away. And then he put his forehead out. And she said, put your forehead out. So I did the same thing. And he put his forehead against mine. And he said some Tibetan stuff. I don't know what he. Blah, blah, blah. That's what he said. And all I know is I just felt really good and happy, like it gave me a great feeling. So I leave. And so now I'm laying in the hospital and I got these rosaries and I'm thinking of this man and I'm okay, I'm holding it. And he blessed these beads for me, by the way. So I just. Every time I touched those beads, I thought of him. Whenever I saw orange or yellow, I thought of him. Because that's the kind of role behind him. It was just amazing. To this day, when I see orange thing, I go, wow, I love that color. So because of him, so I leave and I spent a few weeks there meditating and praying, and now I'm in the hospital and the phone rings again and it's my mother. And she said, daddy has a brain tumor. Yeah, this is a bad day. And I just laid back and I had the beads and I was like, I was so overwhelmed that I wasn't feeling anything per se. It just like froze me. I don't know if anyone knows what I'm talking about. You just like, there was no feeling. It was just okay. And I took the beads and I kind of threw them. I was like, you know what? I've been a Christian, Catholic, angry person for 27 and years and 11 and a half months. And now I'm a Buddhist for, like three weeks. I'm gonna fuck the Buddhism. I don't want that little bit of peace, man. It just makes the rest of it seem so much shittier, do you know what I mean? So I don't want nothing to do with this. The phone rings again. So now I'm like, okay, this is them. They're telling me my wife's dead. Like, I noticed. And it's Jimmy. And he said, mike, I'm outside. I'm coming up. Franny's. Okay, relax. I said, oh, my God, that's amazing. So I got up out of the bed, and she's actually in the emergency room of the hospital I'm in. So I have to go visit her down in this emergency room. And I got this robe on and my morphine pole and another machine that's giving me oxygen. And I just. I said, you know what? And I took my robe off and turned it on backwards so that my balls would be hanging out. I don't know why to this day. There's any psychologists in here if you can talk to me afterwards? No idea. I think it was just me saying, fuck you, everyone. You know what I mean? Will you give me a break here? I'm going to visit my dying wife down in the hot. She didn't die from the flipping over the car, but she's gonna die soon anyway. But I'm gonna go visit her now. And I got pneumonia, and who knows what the hell's going on here? So I'm like, you know what? Here's my. Like, I don't know what the process was, but that's what I did. So I go down and I. And she's in the. And she's sitting up in the bed, and she was a pisser. And she's like. She's out cold sitting. And she got a little. Little cut on her lip from the accident. Tiny cut. Car flip five times on I95. Little cut. And I woke her up. I said, honey, honey. She goes, hey, what are you doing? She was wasted on morphine. She goes, I wanted to surprise you. I said, well, you did. And she. A couple of weeks went by and she ended up in the hospice again. She was in hospice two or three times. Young people don't like to die, you know. Not that old people do, but some old people. I had a good life. She didn't feel that way. She was pissed. She didn't want to die. She was thrown out of hospice for not dying. They put her in. They said, look, you can't stay here. You've been here for four months. It's for like a week, two weeks. You gotta go home. She came back again. Yeah, three times it happened. Finally this time, she died. She died. They told me she was gone. I was at home. I've never stayed home. I stayed with her every night. Her mother was in town, so I took a night and stayed home. And she died that night. When they called me, there was no feeling about it, you know? And it reminded me of when my grandmother died when I was a kid. I didn't have a feeling, it was just okay. And I froze. And I held in all of that death that I had. And because I knew my father is now gotta die. And I loved my father. We were so close. And I was like, I gotta save this angst up, man. I gotta hold on, you know what I mean? You can't fall apart. And so nine months after my wife died, I was out at a movie. I came home and there was a voicemail from my brother, Mike, pick up the phone, Mike, pick up the phone. The second time. Every time I heard him say, pick up the phone, I little more and more fear of what he was going to say. And finally he said, mike, I'm sorry to tell you this on the phone, but Daddy's gone. And you know, I was. I never forget where I was. I was looking at my laundry machines, listening. And I literally felt. Felt my heart be ripped out of me. Like I actually reached for it. It was the weirdest feeling. And that was it. The flame that I had as a kid. All of it gone. Because now everyone died. All at that one moment, you know? And I made arrangements to fly home the next day. And I got on the plane. And when I got on the plane, I decided that I was going to end my life. I'm pretty much done. And I wasn't telling anyone. It wasn't a threat. It was a total fucking decision that I've pretty much had enough of this. There is no more, nothing else to live for. And I'm done. And I got on the plane and I was so excited because I'm really gonna fucking die. This is so great. Like, I was thrilled and at peace. I couldn't wait. I couldn't wait till the funeral was over because that's when I'm going to do it. I'm not going to jump off a building or jump in front of a car if people haven't heard of overdosing on drugs. So I'm on the plane and I've got This decision of ending my life. And I'm at peace and I'm happy, and all my life, God or the universe, whatever the fuck's running this thing would always go, yeah, it's really awful now. You're almost out of hope. But here's a little something to keep you going. Here's something nice to keep you going. I get up, I go to the back of the plane to go to the bathroom, and Lama Chmed, the monk that I had met, is sitting in the back row, and he sees me and he says, where's Palm Beach? And I said, you little motherfucker. And he put his hands out like he did before again, and he put his head out and I did the. It's called Tonglen. And to meet a lama, you have to have amazing karma, they say to have a lama actually want to do tonglen with you, which is giving and taking. That means give me all of your pain, and I'm going to give you all my joy. And the reason he sat for 30 years in meditation was to open his heart so that it gets as big as the ocean, so that if you pour some pain into it, it absorbs it. That's what his whole life was about. And it worked for me, that particular Tonglen just. It worked. And I got home and I quit my job and I said, you don't want to be a fucking comedian.
- [52:16]
Kathryn Burns
That was Mike destefano. To hear Mike's first story about breaking his wife Franny out of hospice and taking her for one last motorcycle ride, go to themoth.org you can also see a picture of Mike and Franny and get links to some of Mike's best. Stand up. This was Mike's last moth story. On March 6, 2011, Mike had a massive heart attack and died. He was 44. Mike was one of the Moth's greatest voices, and we mourn him. That's it for this episode of the Moth for you hour. I hope you'll listen next time.
- [53:52]
Mike DeStefano
Your host this hour was the Moth's artistic director, Kathryn Burns. Kathryn also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the Moth directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Jenna Weiss Berman and Brandon Echter. Special thanks to Kirsten Ames. Moth stories are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Christian McBride, Sufjan Stevens. The books and Mogwat. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with help from Vicki Merrick. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange prx. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themauth.org.
- [55:14]
Dan Kennedy
That'S it for this week's podcast. And if you are listening to this on Tuesday, I am on a plane on my way to Europe to host a couple of Moth mainstage shows over there. We're going to be in Dublin on April 9th. We'll be in London on April 13th and there are still a few tickets available for both of those, so go to themoth.org for details and grab a ticket. Come by and say hi.
- [55:40]
Blinds.com Advertiser
Dan Kennedy is author of the books Loser Goes First Rock on and American Spirit. He's a regular host and performer with the Moth when he's not on Twitter.
- [55:50]
Dan Kennedy
Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest Podcast audio production by Whitney Jones. The Moth Podcast and the Radio Hour are presented by prx, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public@prx.org thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you have a story worthy week.