Hank Azaria, This Cigar, and the Sincerest Form of Flattery
Be patient with me this week. I’ll not be drawing a straight line.
So I found myself in a bowling alley with my wife and six of our dearest friends, watching a veteran actor and voice performer headline a Springsteen tribute band, and through the din and the strobe lights my flight of ideas led me to the cigar shown in the photo above.
“Oh, it’s ANOTHER blog about Springsteen?!” you say? No, it’s not, please stick with me.
The eight of us journeyed together to Brooklyn to see Hank Azaria and the EZ Street Band. It’s one of those events that just pops up and is available to you because you live in the greatest city in the world, and there’s here something for everybody all the time.
The band is a vanity project for Hank, who is undoubtedly one of the most likable celebrities the entertainment industry has given us over the past 30 years. He’s a huge Springsteen fan, and the music is clearly very important to him. He’s doing this for fun, not as a new career path. And fun it is, for everybody in the room. The band he has assembled is excellent, and he’s just solid enough on the vocals, and he takes it just seriously enough (but thankfully not too seriously), to make it a truly joyful experience for all who were present. I estimate there may have been 600 people in the building, and there were exactly 600 smiles on those faces through the whole 80 minute or so set.
Hank and the band go through about a dozen of Bruce’s most familiar songs - Candy’s Room is probably the most off-the-path choice - and remain faithful to the established concert versions of the songs, befitting a group sing-along for the assembled Springsteen faithful. He punctuates the concert with the telling of stories at the junctures where Bruce would do that, but he doesn’t recite Bruce’s stories. Instead he tells his own tales, and mainly they paint the picture of how meaningful Springsteen has been to his life. He talks about growing up in Queens, and how as a teenager when he felt down and out he would look toward the skyline of the city and listen to Jungleland over and over again. He tells a hilarious story of the two times that he has met his idol - degenerating into a blubbering fanboy both times. He tells the story of the night he met his wife, against the unmistakable Bo Diddley beat that is the intro to “She’s the One.”
You walk out of the venue with an understanding of Hank and an appreciation for the impact that an artist can have on people’s lives. Countless men in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s - and probably some who are even younger than that and a few who are older - feel this way about Springsteen, and probably dream secretly about what it would be like to convey those songs to a few hundred strangers. Few would have the stature to be able to make it happen, and to draw a crowd who have no reason to believe that he would even be any good at it. But Hank Azaria could cash in on his notoriety to do this. He wanted to do it, and so he did it for his 60-year old self. I’m happy to have enjoyed it. And I’m happy for him, too.
“So, is this going to be another essay about taking an unorthodox career step in your 60’s? Is this just another late-mid-life crisis thing?” I promise, no.
The first time Hank broke from the music to explain what we were watching, he talked about being an actor and a voice actor, and how he always enjoyed impressions. He talked about how he did some other impersonation - I wish I could remember now, but I wasn’t taking notes because I didn’t think at that point that I would be immortalizing that show in this space - and his Bruce impersonation, and that exactly in the middle of the two he found Moe Szyslak, one of the many Simpsons characters that have garnered him four Emmy Awards (I added the Emmys; Hank didn’t mention them). I appreciated for the rest of the show that when he was singing, but even more when he was talking, we weren’t really hearing Hank Azaria, and he wasn’t trying to make us think we were hearing Bruce Springsteen, but what we were hearing was kind of a blend of the two. Springsteen, as interpreted by Azaria, who has been influenced by Springsteen.
It made me think of how the people in our lives influence what we do and who we are. It set me thinking of the difference between imitation and emulation.
In the song “Walk Like a Man, “ Bruce, as a groom reminiscing with his father, says:
All I can think about is
Being five years old following behind you on the beach
Tracing your footprints in the sand
Trying to walk like a man
We find the people that are important to us and sometimes we copy their actions, their voices, their mannerisms in order to look like we are like them. This might be the way we imitate our parents. Or our teachers. Or our heroes, be they entertainers, athletes, whatever.
I remembered coaching little league and watching the mannerisms of one of the kids on our team and telling him “Matthew, that works for Derek Jeter, but let’s find something that works for you.” I thought that was really wise, and that once I broke him out of that mold, we’d make a player out of him. Turns out he couldn’t hit a lick, so he might as well look however he wanted. But we taught him to bunt, and that was really helpful.
Most of the time, the impersonation isn’t something we do consciously. Whenever my son clears his throat I swear my late father has returned from the beyond because it’s exactly the same sound. He says the same thing when I clear my throat. I don’t think there’s some congenital construction that dictates that the Flynn men create the exact same phlegmatic pitch. I think somewhere along the line I copied that from my father, and Alex from me.
Those are the imitations. They’re more than window-dressing. They’re reminders.
Back to “Walk Like a Man.” The climax of the song (if a tender ballad has a climax), goes:
Tonight you’ll step away from me
And alone at the altar I’ll stand
As I watch my bride come down the aisle I pray for the strength
To walk like a man.
That’s very different, a more mature take on imitation. It’s not “I want to LOOK like you,” or “I want to SOUND like you.” It’s “I want to ACT like you.” Or “I want to BE like you.” It’s part of the process of identifying your role models and incorporating their virtues or actions, and helping them guide your own. But maybe the first part holds one of the keys to holding true to the second part. The mannerisms are cues to unlocking the spirit of the person we copied them from.
When we are in our formative years, I think we collect these things - the mannerisms and more importantly the fundamental essence of our character - from family, from teachers, from friends, from heroes.
But when does it end? Do we do this after we become adults, after we have matured into the character that we have created through adolescence? How do we subtly honor, demonstrate, and incorporate the people who inspire us later than that, in our professional lives?
When you watch Springsteen, you can clearly identify the influence of people like Chuck Berry and Elvis. But those people left their mark on a Sprinsgsteen-in-progress. I’m not well-versed enough in modern rock and roll to be able to identify if I see Bono, or Joe Grushecky, or Melissa Ethridge in any Springsteen tics.
In Hank Azaria’s case, the imitation is it’s own thing. He’s performing as another performer. But I think he’s emulating more than just the words and the sound that comes out of a Springsteen show. I think he admires the whole of Springsteen’s impact and integrity, and aping him in a makeshift concert is a way to personify that.
But most professions are not show business. In my medical life I’ve had countless great mentors, but probably a dozen or so who shaped me the most and who I carry with me and, on some level, try to honor with my actions and my effort. What have I copied from them, and what parts of them have I woven into not only what I do but who I am?
At University of Maryland, where I went to med school, we had a cherished Professor Emeritus named Ted Woodward. There will probably be a blog about him some time later. What I remember most was the humility of the man that the whole Department of Medicine genuflected to, and how he was never shy to say what he didn’t know, and how he owned and learned from every little mistake he ever made. There’s a little vocal inflection that I recall from him, and whenever I find myself acknowledging one of those imperfections in myself, I can hear it in my own voice.
My Pediatric Cardiology mentor was a man named John O’Loughlin. Sometimes in an exam room I’ll find myself in this posture where I’m leaning against the end of the table, not quite standing next to it but not lying on it either, and I’ll conjure John. I realize that this posture is not an accident: it’s a way to somehow appear to be at eye level with the room, when one parent is sitting in a chair and another is standing by their baby.
And then there’s Joe Stavola. Joe started his Pediatric Infectious Disease fellowship at Cornell the same day I started my Pediatric Cardiology fellowship. At the time, I was dating my future wife, who was on an ID elective to start her second year of residency. She came home after the first day and told me she met a guy who should be my best friend. She was right. Joe and I were the same age. We had the same passion for patient care and for teaching. We had the same passion for sports (though for none of the same teams). We had the same sense of humor. We saw each other marry, saw each other become fathers, saw the passion we each had for that. Oh, and one Tuesday night we drove down to Philly and saw Springsteen together, and didn’t miss a minute of work on Tuesday or Wednesday.
For four years at the end of the last century, I was Director of the Pediatric Residency Program at New York Hospital/Cornell. Joe rode shotgun with me. Without a title or any compensation, he was my co-pilot, because he loved it and thought it was important. He was Director of the Pediatric third year medical school clerkship and I was the de facto Director of the 4th year Pediatric Subinternship. We did a lot of teaching and a lot of mentoring. We did a lot of recruiting. We sent a lot of students into careers in Pediatrics, and brought a lot of great young doctors to Cornell.
And to be honest, Joe was better than me at all of it. He was my friend, my partner, and my up-close medical hero. There were things I noticed about him that might have been secrets to his success, or they might have just been things that he did that didn’t really make a difference but reminded me of his effectiveness. On teaching rounds he had a casual, easy posture, almost like a perpetual slouch. But it wasn’t a sign of laziness: it was a way of conveying this: “I’m not in a hurry. I’ll give you time to figure this out. Take your time.” A student, or a resident, might start to answer a question and he would tilt his head just slightly, as if to say “Now you have my attention.” The tilt might tip somewhat forward, which would say “By, George, you’re on the right track.” Or backward, which said “Where are you going with that? Maybe you want to back up a little.” Never emphatic. Never pejorative. But always connected. Always involved. The students and residents were never working for him. He was always working for them. It was the way he approached teaching, and patient care, and friendship, and fatherhood.
After about 15 years at Cornell, Joe left the institution to take a job with a pharmaceutical company. Family issues dictated that his wife step away from her law career to focus on the kids, and the sad fact is that doctors make infinitely more in industry than in academic medicine. It was a terrible loss for patients, families and learners. And colleagues. And specifically for me. And, I think, for Joe.
On Joe’s last day at Cornell, my office was his last stop on the way out. He brought with him two cigars. This was a direct personal challenge because while we were running the residency program, Joe had initiated a tradition that started as “Boys’ Night Out,” which was then amended to the more politically-correct “Steak and Cigar Night.” He knew from our history that I was always happy to partake in the steak part but not the cigar part. He implored me to join him that late afternoon in a smoke, but he accepted that we are each who we are, and he was neither surprised nor aggravated when I declined the stogie. It didn’t stop him, though, and he smoked that smelly thing right across the desk from me. It took me two weeks to get the aroma out of the office. He left the second cigar on my desk, and promised to come back and smoke it in that office on my last day at Cornell, whenever that may be.
About a year later, we learned tragically that a Volvo station wagon - the safest family vehicle in the world at the time, and of course, then, the one that Joe would carry his family around in - is no match for a tree falling randomly on the Merritt Parkway at exactly the wrong time. Joe and his wife Jeanne were gone in an instant. I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you the magnitude of the tragedy, or the depth of the loss.
So the cigar sat on my windowsill, in front of the last picture of the two of us, for the next 17 years. Some days I barely noticed it. Some days I lingered over it. In the picture I could see how much older I had become, while Joe was, unfortunately, fixed in time. The picture, but maybe even to a greater extent the cigar, reminded me how much I miss him. It represented a future moment in time together that has been promised, and would never come. More importantly, it served to remind me to be like him, to honor what he taught me and to try to treat everybody - patients, staff, learners, colleagues - the way he would. I’d glance at the picture, and the cigar, and then some time that day there might be a little slouch, a little head tilt, that would bring Joe bubbling back to the surface to keep me on the right track.
Incidentally it shocked me over the years how infrequently anybody ever came into my office and asked me why I had an unraveling cigar on a shelf right behind me. If they did, there was a lesson they were about to be told. They’d better not have been in a hurry. The lesson would be slouch-worthy.
Then last month came my last full time day at Cornell. I wasn’t leaving completely. I’ll still be there every Tuesday. But that office would not be my office any more. The cigar had to move. I could have taken it over to the other room I’ll be using one day a week. I could have left it where it was and hoped it brought clarity and direction to the next person who inhabited that hallowed space that was the final departure point from Cornell by the best person I ever knew there, but didn’t marry.
Obviously, though, the cigar came with me. It was the very last thing that I removed from my Cornell office. It went straight to a place of prominence in my new office at Avalon. It’ll be there as long as I’m there, if it doesn’t disintegrate. After that, who knows?
Sometimes I wish I could rub the cigar like a genie’s lantern and conjure Joe, petition the universe to lend him back to me for an hour or so. I’d share a laugh with him, and probably some wine that he would choose. We’d talk about sports. I’d ask him how to handle a certain clinical problem. We’d certainly review the goings-on of those residents that we recruited to the program, and he would be deeply proud of what they have accomplished, and the manner in which they have accomplished it. I’m certain that they carry a little bit of Joe around with them to this day, too.
But I know that if Joe were granted an hour back in this life he wouldn’t spend a moment of it with me. Instead he would spend every millisecond of it with the sons that he left way too soon.
It would be, by far, the right answer.
So that’s what the cigar reminds me. Take the things we’ve learned from those we admire, and weave them into the fabric of who we are. It’s not really important how they sound, or how they swing, or how they stand. It’s more about how they act. But if those other things provide cues that recall them, and inspire us to honor them by emulating them in some way, then so be it.
And never let a day go by without cherishing what you have in your life, and who you have in your life. There are no guarantees.
Thanks, Hank Azaria, for a truly joyous night out with great friends, and for a more profoundly meaningful evening than I’m sure you were even planning.
And thanks, Joe, again and always, for lighting the way for me with a cigar, even if it’s one that will never be lit.
