Those songs to me don't exist, you know?

"So What" or Kind of Blue--

I'm not going to play that shit; those things are there.

They were done in that era, 

the right hour, the right day, and it happened.

It's over; it's all on the record.

--Miles Davis

Last night I attended a benefit / premiere for a film written by a friend-of-a-friend. Given a choice, I'd have hunkered down and dealt with some difficult book revisions. But these were unavoidable circumstances that required both my presence and a game-face, and so I resolutely strapped on the old public persona and drove myself downtown.

Normally, most social obligations are easily survived: The trick is to understand their ritualistic context and not mistake them for communication. Social obligations are a kind of profane high mass--dependent on all parties knowing when to respond, when to stand, when to sit and, yes, when to take the wafer--because in most instances we really are breaking bread. And if there's one thing all those Jesuits taught me, it's how to cruise effortlessly through ceremony on undetectable autopilot.

But social obligations involving time-travel force me to disengage automatic; they make me keep my eyes on the instrumentation and improvisationally react. Put another way, a social obligation involving time-travel is a genuine bitch-- faux communication that insists I remain in the moment and also be hair-trigger, like an adrenaline-flushed cast member of Who's Line Is It Anyway? It forces me to be fully engaged in my own boredom instead of having a carefully disguised out-of-body experience in which muscle-memory passes watercress sandwiches while I'm light years away with, say, Tilda Swinton. How else to explain this? It's like having a tooth filled with not quite enough Novocain--the constant anticipation of discomfort is as bad (or worse) as the discomfort itself.

But I'm getting ahead of myself with this time-travel thing. I'm referring to social forced marches with people from one's past who have no connection to one's present. Archeology, but with light hors d'oeuvres. The benefit / premiere meant wading waist-deep into a cast of characters from what actually is another life--or as close to one as possible without playing the reincarnation card. And, difficult as ever, nostalgia is among the many things I don't "do." This, however, isn't simply a taste call--I really don't have access to my previous selves, and, in truth, I'd be profoundly disturbed if I could readily tap into a 13-, 21- or 35-year-old edition of myself.  

The usual conceptual model we use to explain ourselves as we meander down the corridor of time is metaphoric evolution. It allows us to be as we were even as we're changed. It's an integration model: Nice. Comforting. Continuous. But is this most-favored model the only one? What if moving through time is, well, disruptive? What if time doesn't slowly accrete a coral reef around us? What if time is a mutagen? Faced with time, what if we're more reasonable versions of Goldblum's BrundleFly, and not Tandy's Daisy Werthan?

This is why I absolutely avoid official reunions and carefully gauge all other social gatherings for their potential reunionosity. Again, It's not merely the need to conjure-up a one-inch deep, road-company version of Former Me--it's that I no longer have the script. 

Fittingly, I once observed Tom Baker, the actor most famous for portraying the timelord on Doctor Who in the 1970s, interacting with fans decades after his last show. He politely but very uncomfortably was wearing someone's scarf for a photograph and, as this was happening, someone else was asking him about an obscure plot point is the eighth episode of the third season. And I understood completely: The brittle stance, the furtive look in his eyes as he pretended to remember; the layer of courtliness that was designed to disguise the desire to be somewhere--anywhere--else.

Last night, I stood there with a rictus smile, holding a drink and pretending to remember an obscure photo shoot for a magazine cover I genuinely didn't remember, even though I'd designed it. And I must have been good, because more than one former associate from 20 years ago gave me that most horrifying of complements--Hey, man, you haven't changed! Can you imagine? Two-decades of stasis packaged like it was a good thing.

The Irony in that meeting of Tom Baker and his fans is that the Doctor doesn't remain the same--he literally regenerates into someone else. Which is as disruptive of one's past as it gets. And last night that conceit certainly would have come in handy--me simply shrugging and reminding my former associates that this is my sixth regeneration; that I'm no longer a mid-80s editor-in-chief. Or a '90s-style publisher. Or a columnist. I'm the equivalent of David Tennant, the current Doctor, and not Tom Baker--and I would have loved to point out that Tom left the set years ago. 

But the one thing that has remained constant throughout the years are my manners. Though you'd never guess from the snarky blather here and there across the InterWebs, my manners are sterling. (Think Hannibal Lector without all that nasty serial-killer stuff--even though I do frequently wish I could eat the rude.)  And so last night, I posed for photos and attempted to answer questions about the eighth edition in the third volume of the magazine. I even managed to maneuver around all the last names I'd forgotten.

And all the while, I kept playing with the car key in my pocket--the thing that would open the door to my own German-made TARDIS parked outside, ready to whisk me back into the present after I breathtakingly escaped . . . 

    "Ready, then, to tidy up?" The voice seems to come from everywhere. And though you'd like to answer No, the car-wreck curiosity is irresistible. Turning away is useless because you’re already rubbernecking--even though this freakish accident happens to be your own.

    In a swivel chair on an oriental rug, you’re waiting for playback and remembering Steppenwolf: Well, you don't know what we can find / Why don't you come with me little girl? But on a different kind of magic carpet ride--one that's the opposite of escape. The dimmed halogens at the edges of the studio spill a tarnished light down the walls, yellowing the acoustic panels before smudging into shadow. This, even as the fixture above your chair blazes at maximum setting, containing you and the ivory-handled cane in a cone of glacial light . . . .

    In the hotel, at the window, you stare at the inlet and then past it, to the mountains, ice and sky beyond. At True North and unfettered possibilities. Standing here, now that she’s behind you; staring, even as  she makes her oblique way south, toward the narrow selection of unacceptable futures that put everyone at risk but her. Aside from a wrung-out bitch or whispered lover, what more is there left to say? . . . .

    "Standing by for 'Post-Modern Pop Song;' digital transfer of original mix, yes?" The Engineer makes this question an announcement, his voice omnipresent between the monitors. Squinting through the Arctic light and beyond its glare on the control booth window, you see him silhouetted against the halogen-glint on all that gear for re-polishing your past: Business-brisk, in service to the entertainment industry and bathed in the glow of his professional tools. Apart from a terse Let’s do it, then, what more is there left to say?

    And now you want a cigarette--for the first time in many years. Recording studio. Engineer. Hidden dread before playback. Making music means chain smoking--or at least it did. It's Proust’s madeleine-and-limeflower tea, but turned inside out: Circumstances have conjured up a sacred object from the past. And though you try, you can’t shake the desire because in addiction there is no gone. Absence there becomes abstinence; the dull ache of dormancy. Lou Reed materializes then, fading up with some mid-chorus advice: You're still doing things I gave up years ago--which are true words in a truer song . . . .

    “Ducky, there’s no irony in being a doctor who smokes. We all do things that just aren’t good for us; quite indefensible stuff, really.” Julia  shrugs and glances at the Silk Cut, her own indefensible thing. “Some of these behaviors are as blatant as this, but the less obvious ones are no less damaging.” Cigarette glow at her lips again, and more blue-gray smoke as she contemplates you. Then, after a long moment’s hesitation: “Well, Darling, just look at yourself . . . .”

    You're beginning to adjust to the disconnectedness at the heart of Studio World: A perpetual twilight between the centuries that might be anywhere. And yes, the time frame could be narrowed a little by identifying the modules and racked MIDI units. But the spartan trend in component design makes everything an echo of Jonathan Ive. Which is why the concept of Where is useless: The hardware’s international minimalism has eliminated any sense of “here.”

    But all of this is academic because you don't know the tech--at least not like you did: Well, after all, just look at yourself. And so you lean back in the chair: Surrounded by speakers, wanting nicotine and free-floating in a cloudy pool of maybe 10 years. It occurs to you that your resurrection fantasy had always been much more specific than this--even as the details of how you came to be here begin to soften and smudge.

    You'd written the hit song for a successful film. Except in reality you hadn't . . . .