Shy Boyz music video for “Julie’s Fridge” uses my 1948 Philco.
Ever since moving to Philadelphia, I have been fixated on collecting Philco electronics for the house. This was a company that carried a good chunk of Pennsylvania’s economy in the post-war era. In case you didn’t see it, the brand is shorthand for Philadelphia company. The company’s roots go back to the late nineteenth century, but they rose to be a major corporation in the 1930’s with radios, and expanded their line of home appliances for decades.
The antique refrigerator market is a thorny one, but there is always one for sale. I found this one in New Jersey for $135. I offered $120 and happily drove it home. Then I used a city recycling program to get $75 for the fridge that I was replacing.
The heavy bastard had to come up my over-pitched concrete steps and across the house to the kitchen. I never wanted to move it again. Little did I know that it would only be a year before this thing would be put out again, and immortalized in a music video.
I loved the aesthetic of the Philco. I had to run it on a timer, because without a thermostat, the system can’t cycle on its own. Finally, I bought the thermostat and a replacement gasket. But nothing worked out quite as hoped. Thermostat didn’t exactly fit. Got the wrong type of gasket. It was going to cost another $100 to get the right one. I used $5 weatherstripping in the short term. It works but it’s not food grade, so it could hold bacteria. Not recommending this hack at all.
Then the summer came around. The fridge couldn’t compete with ambient temperatures. My tenant used a hell of a lot of ice. Nobody in 1948, when this unit was built, demanded so much ice. Ice was a luxury. It was actually how a large portion of the population were still keeping their ice boxes cold. It wasn’t something that just came out of a lever on your fridge. We ice everything today. It’s bad for ya, by the way. Search it.
I believe now that I created the tiniest of freon leaks, at some point. This is old school coolant that can’t be recharged. If it never leaks, in theory, it lasts forever. The tiniest leak could be undetectable, but the fridge will stop reaching low temperatures, then it will overrun as the thermostat never triggers.
I realized that this fridge wasn’t going to be acceptable to a house squarely paid for by my tenants, even if I resolved it’s problems. I’m making my living on this rental income. I may have aesthetic preferences, but at some point it’s not about me, even if it is my house.
I bought a second mini fridge, but it wasn’t really the solution. Believe it or not, 1940’s through 1950’s refrigerators are 100% more efficient than any new fridge. It simply uses less amperage. Adding a second fridge eliminates the energy savings.
I put it up for sale for $115. I knew it had a lot of valuable parts. A pro could fix it up on the cheap. It was up for a couple of weeks with no bites, and I was afraid it would take months to sell. Then I was saved by the budget of a local filmmaker who said he needed a fridge for a shoot. He liked this one. And it was actually the best deal, when I did my own searching.
Two guys came over with a proper hand truck and we got the thing out safely. No freon explosions. They managed to squeeze it into a Subaru and take it off to shoot right away. I asked them to share their work when it was done. Much sooner than I expected, I got a text message with the screenshot that is the featured image here.
Turned out to be for this humorous, glam pop band called The Shy Boyz, for a song about Mom’s wild portal of a fridge that isn’t just gross, it actually animates the food inside it, called “Julie’s Fridge.”
I grew an attachment to this fridge in a short time, so it is gratifying to see it preserved by Philly artists in their work. Like everything, its destiny is in the dust, but for now it is forever.
For those curious about the history of Philco, the company never died. It partnered with Ford and rose to manufacture aerospace equipment by the 1970’s. The corporation was absorbed by Philips, divesting from Philadelphia, leaving thousands of workers permanently in poverty, as blue collar jobs were replaced with foreign manufacturing, and white collar positions were eliminated, as Philips’ headquarters are in Netherlands.
The Philco brand to me symbolizes the permanent removal of Philadelphia from its 20th Century throne as the “workshop of the world,” a term coined specifically for it, to the 21st Century when the mantle was given to Shenzhen, China.
Intact Product Manual for 1948 Philco C-883
Philco C-883 Fully Closed
Original Philco warranty signed August 1948 by Miss Mary Maksymuck
Above you can hear my latest ambient piece. Inspired recently by a 15-hour Tidal playlist called Autopilot, I realized that I have always loved the ambient genre and particularly find drones to be of utmost value in terms of intellectual concentration. I meditate in silence, but if there is a genre suited to help with that, then it is Drone.
This is my second piece driven by the Arp Odyssey this year. I plan to make it central to most of the drone pieces forthcoming. There is this ongoing line noise problem within the synthesizer that I hope to resolve the next time around. It is noise music, anyway.
Typically, I associate the music I make in improvised sessions with activities surrounding that event. I was repairing my new Volkswagen at this time, and I had recently published stories about my old V-dub.
I bought a non-starting Passat. It is the same model vehicle that I owned before, only this one is 37 years newer than that one. My first was a 1977 Dasher, which was the Americanized version of the Passat. They dashed that marketing differentiation and stuck with the Passat name across international markets. It is also the first Audi and the original modern design from VW. These are now and have always been sweet rides.
This drone is for Rudy the Dasher, which I sold and have lost touch with long ago. The new Passat kicked ass on a recent trip across Pennsylvania. I took it down the shore yesterday as well. I waited until the car agreed with the name before declaring it, and that name came to me as Sonny. It’s a smooth vehicle, son of the Dasher, but aggressive and rough around the edges, like Sonny Sharrock and Sonny Rollins, two of my favorite musicians.
Sometimes I think of where I was when something else happened. For example, in 2003, when this vehicle was manufactured, I had just moved to Portland, Oregon, with my 1990 Toyota Truck. By the time this vehicle was taken possession of, I was enrolling in community college. This car has put on a lot of miles and so have I.
Do things happen in life for a reason, or do we apply reason to chaos? If we have the endowment of reason, do we stand alone with this power? If we are not alone, do we stand below a higher power? My consciousness feels timeless although I know my body is aging, what happens to consciousness when my body fails?
Jiddu Krishnamurti is a stand-alone spiritual leader that takes these common questions and reflects them back at the questioner by absolving himself from answering them. His attitude is skeptical of the questioner and puts it on them to get their own answers. He tries to get behind their question to push it back at them. For example, behind the question of death is very likely fear and insecurity about the unknown, all forms of the unknown. Quick answers may sooth that insecurity, but it may not be Truth.
He renounced all forms of organized religion and refused to teach any kind of meditation practice while deconstructing religious practice and meditative behavior, demystifying these things. If this line of thought makes you feel disoriented, that is good. “Truth is a pathless land,” says Krishnamurti.
Despite having no instruction to offer, people flocked and paid to attend his retreats hoping for spiritual advancement through contact, and community. It is fair to say that he was also a pioneer in business. He was in fact a millionaire. His career spanned from the 1920s until he died in Ojai, California, 1986. His business model has been repeated by hundreds of spiritual and self-help figures, from Tony Robbins to Ram Das.
Today, his legacy is recorded in numerous books transcribed from audio recordings, video and film reels, and increasingly these tapes are becoming available online, thanks to the work of Krishnamurti Foundation.
I borrowed his most famous book, Think On These Things, from a neighbor in my apartment building, in Los Angeles when I was 20 years old. Was that book given to me for a reason? The new age school of thought would respond, “Yes, of course, you manifested it.“ But I have found that to be a cultish kind of thinking prevalent on the West Coast.
I lived in the epicenter (LA) of the cult religion (Scientology) that I was raised in but had rejected firmly as an adult person. Today, my parents are out, but they paid a hefty price. And they continue to struggle with the deep conditioning of it. There is a solution from Scientology to every problem in life — not saying correct solutions. But this is how an adult person loses themselves in it, as life is scary and difficult to face. I think most people tend to look for guidance rather than build and refine their instincts.
Today, I self-identify as Buddhist, but I don’t go to a temple. I practice Vipassana meditation, and Zen, and I work to live by the moral code first transmitted by Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha. If you are Buddhist then you may believe that the principle of karma not only delivered me into a human form, but also the opportunity to at once reject religion and embrace Buddhism on the path of liberation. For me, believing in karma isn’t important. It is about finding gratitude for having a fortunate position in life, and using that position to practice the Dharma (moral code).
My first splintering from Scientology began with a short book by Dalai Llama, The Way to Freedom. I was 17. I have written about that process for THRU Media in a story called “Going Clear, For Real”.
Living inside a conspiracy theory like Scientology gave me the opportunity to come out the other side with the power of spiritual skepticism. Scientology is a quasi-political pseudo-religious multi-billion dollar tax shelter that depends on near-slave labor to maintain itself. I didn’t know about any of this until everyone else did, but I knew it was wrong, spiritually, and the intellectual tool of skepticism guided me away from it through adulthood.
The only people who don’t know how corrupt Scientology is are the many thousands of Scientologists that censor their own information. Like my parents. My family wasn’t deep, so I don’t have any trade secrets, but I saw how a community can reinforce itself in delusion. And let’s face it, you may substitute Scientology with “The Republican Party,” or “The Democratic Party,” or “The Catholic Church,” and so on, and this paragraph would still hold up.
That is spiritual skepticism, looking at all institutions and leaders for what they are: inherently corruptible. We know the self by reflecting on our relationship with others, and we know others from reflecting on ourselves.
We look toward figures of greatness for allegorical inspiration. Siddhartha’s legendary story of leaving the walled garden of his kingdom to face the truth of human suffering has inspired billions of people to date, although we cannot accurately place him in history.
Jiddu Krishnamurti has a documented story that carries allegorical power, but it shows the truth of political convenience, individual weakness, and the dark side of spirituality.
Oil on Canvas Portrait of Jiddu Krishnamurti by Jane Adams via janeadamsart.wordpress.com/
Manufacturing The Messiah
He was personally selected by infamous mystic Charles Leadbetter to become the messiah for the Theosophical Society, at their headquarters in India. The boy, fourteen years old, kind of frail and low energy, was lifted from his impoverished Father by some degree of manipulation on the part of Leadbetter.
The Father was devoted to Theosophy and he knew that the opportunity offered wealth and education for his boy. Perhaps the man believed he would benefit too. Their relationship suffered the deep loss of estrangement as the Father was left outside the inner circle.
Leadbetter believed Krishnamurti was already awakened, claiming to see his brilliant aura, while others thought the boy was dull. He was given a rigorous combination of British education with esoteric training into occult practices so that young Jiddu would become The World Teacher. He was not only groomed as their messiah over the next decade, but he eventually served as a salaried editor and columnist for their newsletter, providing a public face for the Theosophical Society.
This is a lot of pressure, and a rebellious young man might exploit some holes to their logic. After those first ten years of rather more blissful times, the delusion of the role they set out for him began to crack under intellectual scrutiny. The first blow to his faith in Theosophy must have been the estrangement of his master.
Leadbetter would be forced out of the Theosophical Society, England and India, where the society was headquartered, for sexual misconduct with countless children under his tutelage. Jiddu himself denied having gone through sexual abuse. Leadbetter found exile in Sydney, Australia, by 1915, just six years after discovering Jiddu. The mystical pedophile would live the rest of his life as a Bishop in the Liberal Catholic Church and as a member of the Co-Masonic Order.
The story of Leadbetter and other figures in his life are a big feature of the posthumous biography A Star In The East. Author Roland Vernon wanted to illustrate clearly why Krishnamurti renounced Theosophy. Prior to this book, very little was understood about his youth.
Annie Besant consolidated much of the power that she shared with Leadbetter as a leader of the Theosophical Society. She helped conceive of the World Teacher Project circa 1900. She provided a critical role in Jiddu’s daily life, serving him as a mother figure, educator, and role model, while at once manipulating him toward her project. He cared for her and she cared for him, but he would be estranged from her eventually, as well. He last visited Besant in 1926, though she did not pass until 1933.
In August of 1929, just a month before the market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, he dissolved The Order of the Star, an organization of 3,000 members devoted to the oncoming messiah that he had strategically positioned himself to lead. By dissolving it, he was just Jiddu Krishnamurti again. I’m not sure how much money or followers we was able to keep with the dissolution, but it was apparently enough to start his own venture with the help of his core posse.
He never spoke of Theosophy, Besant or Leadbetter unless pushed into it. He made a wise political decision in that regard, but also liberated himself from bad vibes and carried on with the new frequency that he had tuned into.
He settled in Ojai, California with his closest friends and long-time lover, working the land, rebuilding his speaking career where he felt there was more open-mindedness than almost any other place in the world. He spoke mostly in India, Europe, and across the United States, publishing dozens of books containing hundreds of transcripts, until his death in the 1980’s.
Finding My Allegorical Inspiration
He was born into a situation much riskier than mine and his payoff was much greater. Like all heroes, we look to them even if our problems are minor by comparison. I found allegorical inspiration at a time in life in which I was voracious for philosophies that could thoroughly discredit Scientology, so that I could move on psychologically.
If you want to critically think through life, skepticism is indispensable. The term “spiritual skepticism” was adopted if not coined on the Tin Foil Hat Podcast. That is where I heard it. I enjoy that show for its humorous presentation of conspiracy theories. A diversity of opinion is good. Even sifting through false information is good, which you have to do with that show, if you want to get some genuine, unreported Truth.
Our sense of discernment is built like a muscle. Nobody will curate a perfect stream of Truth for us and to expect that is like opening your skullcap for easy brainwashing. I like ideas that make me uncomfortable. I like challenging my biases. By doing so, I explore the depth of my psyche.
Krishnamurti says that true listening happens in three areas at once. If someone is speaking, you hear the speaker verbatim, while observing their bias, while observing your reaction. The same can be said of reading a book, a news article, hearing a podcast, or watching documentary.
Listening is meditation. It involves deep concentration. The old joke of people falling asleep at church is taken for granted. If there is a total loss of attention, what is the purpose of going to church? If one goes for the community, I can tell you that Scientology had a lovely community, but it was the blind leading the blind. If you’re asleep during service, are you deaf?
How often have you loudly reiterated a position on a political topic even though it was debunked or misinformed? Nobody has never done this. Do not deny it. Whereas the admission that you don’t know something liberates the mind from delusion and frees up brain power for new possibilities. Intelligence is allowed to operate with a simple “I don’t know.” It is fully shackled when stuck in one position. So it is not about being right all the time, that is too much pressure, it is about knowing when you don’t know.
I don’t know if there is ever a time that you can absolutely know anything. But in the parameters of our observable universe, there is plenty to know and to live by. If we too frequently say we don’t know, I’m afraid we’re making ourselves dull. Keep an open mind, but not so much that your brain spills out. I’m not sure who said that.
Everything in life is in motion. Sometimes you know. Sometimes you don’t know. Truth will continually flow, but your mind is not required to flow with it, it can believe whatever it wants. The brain doesn’t care if an object is real or imagined. The idiomatic expression, “jerking yourself off” uses the allegory of masturbation to refer to a psychological process. Men will lay in bed with dry palms imagining a warm wet pussy and cum into that imaginary woman, that is their bare fist. There is no difference between this and filling your head with beliefs in order to satisfy some absence in your life.
Be willing to disprove your beliefs every day. Abandon them when you reach the shore of Truth. Belief is a raft to carry over the tumultuous river of doubt.
Skepticism gradually purifies all the nonsense that comes from living in our media saturated environment, this age of PR. I have upended my relationships and reset my spiritual, political, and aesthetic preferences a few times now. I have been susceptible to insecurity and I was clinging to my social group out of fear rather than out of love. It led to almost as much delusion as any cult. It led to many people being hurt by me, and many people hurting me. Let’s face it, fear exposes you like nothing else.
We are all hurdling into a brave new world, with all the trappings of social fragmentation that Krishnamurti spent his life warning about. He tracked it from the end of World War One through the height of the Cold War, the hippie movement, the new age, yoga, and meditation crazes. He got notably more cranky over the decades as it seemed his message was going to waste. But he tried on until death.
Maybe he really was the world teacher, because I have yet to see a more concise and apt description of the stresses taking place on the human psyche than the ones he described. He lasted into the computer age — he had begun comparing the brain to the computer. Science has proven him correct. It is that easy to program.
The world we live in desperately needs defragmentation, yet the tactics of ideological warfare only seem to be increasing. If the world psyche is an operating system, it is Windows 95 and it is full of viruses.
Yet for me, my life personally, I have never felt less like I am on a side, part of any groupthink, or even swayed by any close friends and family. It is lonely, but I’m not tormented. I am watching a world fracturing, watching people at the height of fear become highly susceptible to whatever information, whatever community that brings them security. I worry about them, but I am through with trying to control anyone’s perspective. I know that I crave a good cult and belief to live by, but once you’ve discriminated gold from pyrite, you will not trade back.
Several years ago, we almost started a new series of videos inspired by Between Two Ferns, but the idea was that I’m couch surfing and interviewing artists at their home, preferably squeezed into a space not hospitable to an interview.
As of posting this, the world is being instructed to stay six feet apart from everyone. That makes this particularly nice to watch right now.
We produced this start to finish in one night, over beers, giving an authentic touch to the skittish editing. We did it with just two cameras and one lamp.
Estevan and Nicholas Munoz are a talented pair of dudes. They both still live and work in Portland. Nicholas is a comedian. Este wanted to be a filmmaker, but now he’s all in as a rapper, going by Chaz Matador. This however suits his other interests: Writing and Comedy. I met him because he was interested in writing for THRU Media. He joined up as an early “staff” writer and helped produce our Indiegogo video.
Watching this now, I think we discovered a good concept, but it was just the context of the moment. It was easy to perform, because back then, I was actually housing insecure, living the starving dirtbag artist lifestyle while posing as this sophisticated media guy. It could have been funny, each time finding a new way to crash at my guests’ house — like the only reason I’m doing this is to find a new couch to crash on.
Auto mechanical talents run through my genetic code almost as consistently as big noses. My father’s side comes from the Oil City area of Pennsylvania, so named for being the epicenter of the oil boom in America. My mother was born in Detroit. We are always one degree of separation to an autoworker.
Shekell Moving Co. First Motor Truck
My great-great grandfather stakes claim to having introduced the first motorized moving truck in Detroit, upgrading from a horse drawn trailer for his Shekell Moving Company. My father’s brother is 75 and winning amateur car races at the Tucson Speedway, with his own machine shop bearing the official sponsorship.
My father can drive a car so that it will run 300,000 miles. Somehow even the interiors remain intact. I think he keeps his vehicles together with psychic will and steady routine. That shows an inherent understanding for the car, but using his hands as a technician, that is quite another thing. Truth is he can barely turn a wrench.
The genetic material could not stop itself in me, although I turned out more like my father, an artist. Like him, I love making music and writing, and yet I find myself rebuilding motors too.
Since high school, I’ve been working on my own cars. Gradually, I have drawn down my reliance on other people to repair them, taking on more complex maintenance over time. There was one project that lifted me to the next level: Rudy the Dasher, a 1977 Volkswagen Dasher 2-door Coupe.
We were fortunate enough to be together, the car, Kate and I, during the full solar eclipse of 2017.
This car was given to me by a good friend, Tony, because it was stuck in his driveway. The classic, but forgotten, VW was his grandfather’s, inherited by his father, then given to him, then given to me. I was honored. Tony just wanted to see the car running again. He tried to maintain it for a while, but it just kept breaking down.
Our mutual friend Doug was our mechanic. He’s also a musician, a multi-instrumentalist in the jazz tradition. I took private piano lessons from him in college. He is a true renaissance man, capable of almost anything. He has always been there to help me on car projects, whether or not I was broke. It was natural to ask him if he would help me with it.
First thing was getting it out of Tony’s driveway. I was living in an apartment downtown, so I asked my new-at-the-time-girlfriend, Kate, if I could tow it to her house and work on it there. She kept the housemates at bay, but I had to work in the street. I found a cheap Craigslist tow driver for 50 bucks and that was that.
Second thing was to clean it out. It was taking on water thanks to dry rotted gaskets around the glass. It was molding all through the interior. Luckily, it was almost completely surface level, and the rust had not yet eaten through anything. Kate helped and we got it clean.
The more I learned about the Dasher, I couldn’t understand how dime-a-dozen VW bugs were so valuable to auto collectors, while this unique, historic car was totally ignored by them. It was the first modern car by VW, introduced in 1974, it is actually the Passat — Dasher is the American model name.
Even in mint condition, this Dasher would not sell for as much as a bus, bug, or Ghia, in poor condition. So it was a labor of love, because I thought this car was too cool to be junked.
After cleaning it out, I had to get it to run. You have air, spark, and fuel. When you are starting from scratch, you have to troubleshoot everything. And it turned out everything was wrong.
Read into the deeper technical stuff on my portfolio page here. See an archive post in which I look to Rudy as a case study in the true environmental impact of cars and the importance of maintaining them. Kate even wrote a poem dedicated to the car, also for THRU.
Kate and myself out on a swimming excursion, with Rudy, July 2015.
We named it Rudy. I gave it a full name: Rudolph Spirit Walton. Let’s break that down. Rudy because it is an underdog, like the football film Rudy. Rudolph honors the reindeer, because VW collectors have been snubbing it from their reindeer games (irony that its factory name is Dasher, I know). Spirit because in Portland, “Spirit of 77” refers to the only year the Portland Trailblazers won the NBA Finals (against Philadelphia). Walton because Bill Walton was MVP that year.
Once it was running, I just kept working on it. For almost three years, this remained my daily driver. When it was tuned up, even with its flaws, it had a glide to it. My favorite was to drive in the farmlands over the Northwest hills of Portland, all connected to Skyline Boulevard.
Skyline is an old residential highway tracking the summit of the mountain dividing Portland from her western suburbs. With rack and pinion steering, you turned the wheel with the road in a way that feels one with its curves, accelerating and coasting in third gear gave just enough range to make most turns without downshifting.
It didn’t have fast acceleration with 84 horsepower, but it had smooth acceleration and would build momentum, getting from zero to 60 faster by the moment. The motor has a Porsche-like growl about it. It was marketed as a luxury car and it felt like one, despite the cracks in the dashboard and flickering lights.
Problems were always popping up. It became a part-time job that wasn’t paying off. Kate was beginning to lose patience with it, and with me, by late 2015. That was a rough year in general, and it cost me so much time, money, and energy, that it seemed foolish to go on with it. I tried to sell it, but its title was stolen out of our storage locker and I couldn’t afford to replace it. Really, that year was traumatic on the whole.
Kate got photos of me doing the brake overhaul. Photo by Kathleen Dolan.
We survived it. Relationships are difficult but we got through, things were looking pretty good, then in 2016, the motor crapped out. It just wouldn’t start. I did a compression test and it failed. Not sure what to do, I found a junky old Ford Ranger for $500 and I grabbed it. Ended up selling it broken down on the side of the road for half that a month later. My name and date was never put on the title, so it was worth it because I needed the truck to take on jobs.
I decided to rebuild the Volkswagen. It had made it down to the hill to the barn before it stopped starting. Better there than the street, but challenging nonetheless. I had to bring the motor to Doug’s warehouse, then commute to his place every day until it was finished. Tony let me borrow his truck to transport the motor back and forth.
While I had the chance back at the barn, I pulled every last part from under the hood, inspected, repaired, or replaced what was needed, and scrubbed it down. By the time we finished the motor and put it back in, it was almost totally mechanically restored.
Using a sleeve, we safely drop pistons into their chambers. Photo by Kathleen Dolan.
As you might expect, it felt better to drive than ever. I got a taste of what it felt like to drive that car new off the lot. And I think it is a swell drive.
I probably enjoyed a few months of trouble free driving before the next wave of mysterious issues would surface, and I would just keep myself busy resolving them.
Some time in early 2017, Kate and I decided to move out of Portland. So it just made sense to sell it and buy a truck, or van. I found a vintage Ford F-150 on Craigslist for just $700. You don’t get one of those for that price without problems. So I started all over again.
Rudy was listed on eBay because I figured there had to be someone in North America looking for a Dasher. Locally, I just got lowballed. I was right. Someone in Idaho bought it, he said he drove a Dasher in college. So I took Tony and his girlfriend together in the backseat on a drive along Skyline Boulevard, at sunset on a summer night, to give him some closure on the project.
Two days later, Rudy was on the freight truck. Meanwhile, I was already working on my new truck, Harriet, to ensure she would make it to Tucson. Little did I know that I was driving a motor that technically should not have been running. I’ll have to save that story for another day.
