IMAGE Essay: “My Own Private Garfunkel”

My latest IMAGE Journal “Good Letters” blog essay, titled “My Own Private Garfunkel,” is available to read here. It’s largely about my good friend Mark, who was my own personal Art Garfunkel back in the late ’90s.

Here is an excerpt:

When I was nineteen and beginning to perform as a singer-songwriter, I found out that rock ‘n’ roll was not without its share of interlopers intent on shoehorning themselves into the musical action. Most of them insist they are expert tambourine players, but tend to be more adept at stealing the spotlight.

I would have welcomed a tambourine player. Instead, I had Mark, who insisted he could sing.

“Let me sing with you, Chad—I’ll be the perfect Garfunkel to your Paul Simon,” I imagine him saying. I cannot remember how the conversation actually unfolded. He lacked Art Garfunkel’s dandelion-clock hairdo but bore resemblance to him all the same.

Mark said I could share some other information about him via my blog:

1) He once memorized the entire soundtrack to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and on purpose.

2) In college, Mark and I used to obsessively watch Cartoon Network’s Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, and do impersonations of Brak to the point where we annoyed people.

3) In my yet-to-be-published book, The Stained-Glass Kaleidoscope, I write of how Mark was the member of our Simon & Garfunkel-inspired outfit who had a drug problem. He once took a Tavist-D before we sang at my parents’ church, and that antihistamine took him to the depths of slumber. I nearly had to administer a shot of adrenaline to the heart to wake him.

4) Mark is single, ladies. Check him out on the Wheaton College website, and feel free to mob him in a Beatlemania-like throng.

Finally, if you are curious how we sounded as The Tragicomedy, our album La Femme is available for free download here.

“Chad Thomas Johnston is an author, sonuva’ preacha’ man, PhD-dropout, singer/songwriter, music producer/sonic reducer, daydreaming doodler, gorilla/guerilla publicist, cinemaddict, & pop-culture obsessive. He is represented by Seattle, WA-based literary agent Jenée Arthur, who is currently shopping his debut manuscript to major publishing houses.

Follow Him on Twitter: @Saint_Upid

Read more at Chad Thomas Johnston