Köpet Dag Days: Foreword
In 2022, my Peace Corps group gathered (virtually on Zoom) for two days to reminisce about the twenty-seven months we’d spent in Turkmenistan together. Many of us hadn’t seen each other in the twenty-five years since we’d parted ways, back in December 1997.
As I prepared for the reunion, I allowed myself to more deeply recall those days I’d spent between the Köpet Dag Mountains and the Karakum Desert. While the door to my memory was open, I started writing a memoir. Though I’ve fancied myself as a writer at times and believe my escapades and misadventures in Turkmenistan worthy of an entertaining read, in the end I just didn’t believe my skills were up to snuff to “wordsmith” it into a form any publisher would snap at. So the memoir has been written, but solely for the edification of my son and any progeny who might be curious to read about the “old days”, way back in the 1990s.
Though I was sent to a post in Turkmenistan quite isolated from my co-volunteers, I did have my guitar with me. It proved a prolific time for my songwriting – I was constantly scratching out pieces – always trying to find some new combination of sounds that would give me a novel and exciting sonic ride. Many of those songs have appeared on albums I’ve compiled throughout the last couple decades, but a significant number were deemed “less interesting” and left in the slush pile.
And then an idea presented itself to me: how about if I record those songs as a soundtrack to a spoken-word-audio-book recounting of highlights from my memoir? The songs need not be fascinating in and of themselves, they’d be secondary to the narration, therefore it would be okay if they weren’t what I deemed to be my best work.
So I rolled up my sleeves and recorded the guitar part of twenty plus songs from my Peace Corps days. At the same time, I outlined in great detail parts of my memoir that would fit with each shifting movement of each song. Alas, when I finally attempted some voice-over narration over my recordings, I realized my vision was flawed and it just wasn’t going to work.
In frustration, I abandoned the project.
The reunion came and went.
The door was gently shut again on my past in the Corps.
I went on with my life and other projects.
Two years later, I stumbled upon the guitar recordings I’d made and was shocked at how much effort I’d put in. At the same time, having renewed my friendship with Jonas (he a member of “T-2”, the volunteer group who’d arrived the year before mine in Turkmenistan) resulted in him shipping his Turkmen dutar (two-stringed traditional instrument) to me. It had been in his father’s basement for twenty-five years.
Suddenly a new vision arose: I could layer dutar and other instruments atop those guitar works and see how they might grow. Though I deemed the songs as less artistically interesting, perhaps with a little extra care (like Charlie Brown’s Xmas tree), they might prove to be more than I gave them credit for.
The new idea would still have the songs considered as a soundtrack, but this time there would be no voice-over, the songs would have to stand alone…well, almost: I still had copious notes connecting memories to the songs; I decided maybe I could include just a bit of written reflection per song – for anyone who might be interested in a little storytelling as well.
Eventually these short reflections developed into letters written to friends and family who I would have reached out to at the time. The letters would be impostors, pretending to have been written while living there, but they would serve the purpose of focusing my thoughts and condensing my memories into the smaller format I felt was necessary (for the modern attention span).
(A note about these letters: they don’t contain any of the usual “How’s so-and-so?” and/or other interpersonal chit-chat that would of course accompany any letter I write. These letters are presumed to pick up before/after any such communication takes place, focusing solely on descriptions of Turkmenistan and my state-of-being therein.)
I know, when I’ve read any memoirs in which I’ve been a player, I have hungrily sought out my name in print. Perhaps it gave me some existential buzz. If any of the players in my story also receive such a pleasureful jolt from seeing themselves mentioned, they’ll have to do so under pseudonym – I’ve decided to forego using anyone’s real name. These letters are being presented to the public at large via the internet, and I default to protecting privacy. Hopefully you’ll know who you are even if the wider world (of less than one hundred people who are likely to ever read this) doesn’t.
There are twenty-six songs and thus twenty-six letters. They do go together but are not tethered together and can be approached separately. Though it causes some inaccuracy in regard to the timeline and how certain events and experiences played out, I decided the letters should each be given a date: one month of service in chronological order.
And what of the twenty-seventh month?
This was sent to the gods of oblivion as a sacrifice in hope that they’ll allow the other twenty-six to exist in this time and space for some years.
For more information about the songs themselves, including a list of instrumentation for each, please see the Appendix.