Truth

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.

– Oscar Wilde

Snow

Cars litter the side of the road
like so much shiny trash
snow rushes out of darkness
to die on my windshield
the man beside me rocks back and forth
after two bags he’s capped off
his Peg reunion with a dose of ‘done
and right now his body doesn’t like him very much
my wheels whirr in slush looking for purchase
I float past a jackknife
in a halo of red and blue

the man behind me was with me
another night
another highway
another truck
our blood was painted on the snow
as we

(me and the man beside me)

left in one ambulance
as men in thick parkas plumes of breath
like word balloons in cartoons tried to free
(the man behind me)
from twisted metal in a strobe
of garish red and blue

for no reason I can see the man in front of me veers suddenly
from his lane and just like that he’s out of this game of
beat the ice and get home
he’ll be hours now and whatever might have happened
is changed forever because of this snow
this endless snow

Road tale #2

When I get to the gig in Houston – well, really, Humble, actually I guess Kingwood – I’m pretty hungry, so I quickly set up my stuff and order some good ole bar food. When the waitress brings my quesadilllas up to the stage for me, I sit down at this little table set up for the band in the corner back by the restrooms and dig in.

So as I’m sitting there, happily munching away, another waitress approaches me at a fast pace, trying to escape into the bathroom from this slightly tight middle-aged guy intent on talking her up. He’s babbling away about something — I’m not really paying attention — but instead of going into the bathroom, she stops next to me, puts her arm around my chair in a sort of proprietary way (I don’t know her), interposing me between her and this predatory fool. I know the strategy, no problem. I give the guy a mild, neutral smile, as if to say, yessir, she’s surely pretty, but she’s with me, alas — and he says, “Oh, you’re in the band, huh,” a little sarcastic edge in his voice.

“Yes, sir,” I reply. Friendly, noncommittal. I just want to eat my meal.

“Are you any good?” he asks. I shrug, always the existentialist — what is good?

“Probably not,” he says, dismissing me — big deal — but then he adds, gesturing at the waitress (whose name I don’t even know), an honest to god sneer on his face, “SHE obviously doesn’t have much in the way of standards.”

I say, “Security!” It’s a little joke I have with myself, a sort of rock star fantasy where some huge bald guy shows up and carries nitwits away from my regal presence. The waitress gets it immediately and quietly giggles. Waitresses, like musicians, are incessantly pestered by drunks; shoot, she probably has a similar fantasy.

Our unpleasant friend senses he’s being laughed at, and yells (in a white-guy-used-to-bossing-people-around voice), “WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

Something snaps in me, not a big snap where he’s in peril, but a little break – and in a nanosecond this flashes through my brain:

I’m just trying to eat my dinner and here’s this fat cat honky lord of whatever putrescent shit heap he rules bothering women and treating me like a second class citizen I am not a second class citizen in fact I am a member of a proud and noble profession I have traveled millions of miles at the service of my muse I have laid my heart and soul at the feet of the multitude out of the purest sort of love I am no better than anyone else but I and this young woman standing next to me deserve to be treated with dignity and respect

I speak up. ” ‘I said, ‘SECURITY!‘ ” The waitress is laughing out loud now, but I’m no longer trying to be funny.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says.

“It means I’m trying to eat, and you’re bothering me, so fuck off.”

“Oh, shit,” the waitress says. I’ve made her day.

“Do you know who I am?” the guy says, his voice trembling, at once incredulous and enraged, “nobody talks to me like that!”

I take another bite of my quesadilla. Infinite calm has settled over me. This situation can go anywhere, but this motherfucker is going down.

“I don’t care who you are, this is my space, you’re in it, fuck off and go away. Now.”

His voice is higher now. “I’m Jim So and So, I own the bar across the street, nobody talks to me like that!”

“Well, Jim, I’m sure you’re the king of Kingwood, but I don’t give a shit. Depart. Split. Scram. Fuck the fuck off, you detestable fuck.” Another bite. The waitress slides away, giving my shoulder a squeeze. This isn’t what she had in mind, but hey, he’s not thinking about her anymore.

Jim is hissing with rage. As I chew I wonder if he’s going to have a stroke. I hope not. I just want to enjoy my little repast. He ducks into the men’s room, where I’m pretty sure he hopes to find some sort of weapon. Maybe he’ll attack me with a towel dispenser. I glide a tortilla through some guacamole. Seconds later he’s back out again, so mad he’s got tears in his eyes. He leans hard against the high round table I’m sitting at, beyond sentences:

“Cocksucker! …I’m…business…man…you can’t…kill you…fucker…”

I’ve got him now. Little bits of fat are breaking away from vein walls and racing towards his heart. Delicate cranial capllaries are swollen like carnival balloons.

Part of me knows I’m behaving badly, but a cold wind is blowing through me.

Jim is my bitch.

“See this, Jim?” I show him the little card on the table. “It says, ‘Band Table.’ That means right now you’re in my little corner of the universe, and I want you out of it immediately. Go the fuck away, Jimmy my boy.”

A little salsa on this bite. This is the greatest quesadilla I’ve ever tasted.

Jim squeals — his voice literally goes up 3 octaves, like he just sucked on helium. He grips my table. He wants to push it over, but he’s just a woman-bothering coward, and we both know it, so he stops short. Out of some desperate well of machismo he says, “You want a piece of me?” I wince. Who writes this crap? “Take your best shot!”

I lean around my table very slowly and take all of him in, from his expensive loafers to his Docker pants to the woven belt around his fat stomach to his Gap shirt filled with big soft man titties, finally up to his blotchy, alchoholic face. I look deep into his eyes.

“Nossir,” I say, a big smile on my face (I never knew I could be this cruel), “I don’t think you want me to do that.”

He raises his fist as if to strike me – I’m calmly waiting for his decision, but I already know, in this strange zone I’m in, what it’ll be – and then he turns on his heels and stalks away. As I slowly, almost luxuriously finish my meal in blessed solitude, he stands clear across the large room glowering at me, arms folded across his chest. Exaggeratedly savoring the last bites of my bar grub with the relish I’d enjoyed the swirl of chocolate and vintage port on my tongue a couple of nights before, I watch him complaining to the club owner, red faced, gesticulating in my direction. I’m pretty sure our friend Jim isn’t particularly beloved in this neighborhood, and I’ll bet he’s pestered every waitress that works here at one time or another, but I don’t care; I’m just glad to finish eating in peace. The club owner shrugs and walks away, so Jim turns to face me again, just as I’m delicately dabbling my mouth with a napkin. Very slowly I get up and walk towards him, and as I get closer I slowly remove my glasses – god, what a mean bastard I’ve become! – I want him to know he can slug me if he wants to, but I’m driving home tonight after the gig, I don’t want my glasses broken. As I walk directly towards him he takes a step backwards, and I reach around him and put my trash in the can right behind him. It’s all I can do resist giving him a big kiss on his cheek — in his present state it might kill him.

That’s the last I see of Jim. Driving home I keep telling myself I should’ve handled the situation in a different way, I was wrong to humiliate this blowhard, just because he was a mean little prick doesn’t mean I have to set him straight — who am I to take that responsibility? Beyond that, pushing anyone that hard is dangerous, but a coward might do anything. You can bet he’s got a compensatory large gun collection at home and a sports car to get to it in. No matter what he does, he’s still a loser, yes, but what if my actions got some innocent bystander hurt? The waitress hadn’t asked me to castrate the guy, but some cold hard reptile part of my brain just took over.

I want to feel regret, but I don’t. This guy believes he can insult anybody he wants to and that his money and position in the little pond he swims in makes it okay. I don’t expect he’ll go to church Sunday and ask God to show him a better way, but I’ll bet I induced in him a Pavlovian aversion to bothering women at that club, and perhaps in general.

Maybe evil is the accumulation of a billion uncontested injustices. Maybe if we resist them, one at a time, we can weaken the hold of tyranny.

Or maybe I was just punking ofay swine.

Hot Tub

Alright, lemme try to be completely clear. The subject of drugs is of course incredibly complex. I’m not here to condone their use. I emphatically condemn their abuse, lawful or unlawful, convenience store or pharmacy, street corner or Bolivia.

Alcohol has killed more of my friends than all the illegal ones combined. Tobacco killed my father and probably contributed to my mother’s death as well. Other people I love have been addicted to heroin or cocaine, suffered horribly and inflicted horrible suffering on those who love them. Some of them have died from overdose. Some have been murdered. One committed murder. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.

Drugs suck.

Except when they don’t.

This post is about one tiny skirmish in the war on drugs. As in most wars, one side claimed victory, but everybody lost.

you might see me tonight with an illegal smile
it don’t cost very much, but it lasts a long while
won’t you please tell the man I didn’t kill anyone
I’m just tryin’ to have me some fun

– John Prine

twenty years ago…

We were a six-piece rock band. We’d gathered at our drummer’s house for a rehearsal, but he was late, so we went up on the deck he’d built high above the carport behind his house, and fired one up. It was particularly good weed; in addition to being a superb drummer, Nimble was a gifted farmer, and he kept us in the big big, as we affectionately called it.

We’d barely smoked a third of the joint and were already high when we heard the sound of slamming car doors. Then a half dozen officers of the law came spilling around the back corner of the house, dressed in black, caps on backwards, wearing bulletproof vests, brandishing shotguns and automatic weapons: drug paraphernalia. Most of the cops were D.E.A.; a couple had the insignia of the local constabulary.

Stoned as we were, we just leaned on the railing of the deck, 15 or 20 feet above them, gazing down as they boiled around like angry ants. But not one of them thought to look up. Finally, a little embarrassed on their behalf, I put the joint into a slat in the woodwork and gently cleared my throat, hoping to let them know we were there without provoking a hail of bullets. Of course they freaked out anyway, and began screaming, “Freeze, motherfuckers,” and, “Get down, or we’ll kill you,” and, “Get those hands up,” and all the other clichéd commands men with guns and televisions are given to spouting. They dashed up the stairs, jammed gun barrels in our faces, and slapped the cuffs on us. Thus fettered, they led us to the empty hot tub Nimble had installed between the high deck and the back door of his house, and sat us down there so they could keep an eye on us. While one local cop watched us, ready to blast hippie musician scum with his tenner, or elevener, whatever the hell it was, the rest began to tear our friend’s house apart.

Nimble had a little farm out in the country, and on that farm he grew some ganj, E I E I O. A neighbor had guessed what was going on and alerted the authorities. They’d slapped a tail on Nimble, whose paranoia had lapsed after years of selling his cash crop to many local luminaries, among them several, um, high state officials. But the ongoing war on drugs was in full swing, and the D.E.A., in conjunction with local authorities, had landed on our drummer with their innumerable feet.

He wasn’t just late for rehearsal — he was busted.

Seven hundred lovely, centerfold quality marijuana plants had been found, and Nimble was looking at a stretch at the Hard Rock. Federal.

We sat in the empty hot tub on that late summer afternoon, hands cuffed tightly behind our backs, the mosquitoes enjoying delicious band tartar, watching and listening to our friend’s house get trashed. Mattresses were ripped open, holes were smashed in the walls and floors with sledgehammers, and, oddly, every dish in the kitchen was broken.

Are drugs often hidden inside of saucers?

These warriors were convinced they’d busted not just a pot grower, but a major drug dealer. They were sure they’d find guns, huge sums of money, stashes of cocaine or heroin, maybe even a few bodies. After awhile it seemed like they weren’t searching anymore, just tearing shit up for the sheer joy of it. At one point one of the Federal boys came out and triumphantly held a handful of white powder under our noses, saying, “What do you suppose this is?”

“Talcum powder,” we replied instantly, feeling badly for the poor misguided son of a bitch. Cocaine is some awful shit, a soul-killing scourge, and we detested it.

We were a very good band. Exploring the not-so-obvious connections between roots rock, country, New Orleans funk, Tejano, and psychedelia, it seemed to us that taking psychoactive substances might help illuminate our path. There was a communal, almost devotional aspect to our drug use. Above all a musician should be soulful, so when the cop displayed the white powder in an obvious (and soulless) effort to rattle us, hate and contempt for us oozing from his every pore, more than anything, we were saddened.

His ploy a failure, he tossed it in the air and went back to ripping the house apart.

Feathers from Nimble’s slashed pillows floated by us like snowflakes. Talcum powder and sheetrock dust hung in the air like cocaine.

After an hour and a half of being eaten by mosquitoes and taunted by cops, melting in the motionless August heat, our arms had gone completely numb. A couple of us needed to pee. We still hadn’t been charged with anything, and we’d begun to bond with the local cop assigned to guarding us. After all, he was an Austinite, just like us, and we’re almost a species, we Central Texans. By then the house was in total shambles. They hadn’t found anything, it was clear they weren’t going to, and we were obviously peaceful, so he took it upon himself to release us one at a time to relieve ourselves. Mercifully, after we’d done our business, he handcuffed our wrists together less tightly in front of our bodies.

One of the guitarists in the group, I’ll call him Duck, asked if he could play a cheap guitar that was lying in Nimble’s bedroom just off the deck. Lord knows the world loves a guitar player; the cop went and fetched it. Hands bound close together, Duck looked as though he was playing a ukulele. He started banging out a cool rhythm chop that we immediately recognized, and, laughing, we burst into singing “The Midnight Special.” Immediately, one of the D.E.A. guys came running out, purple with righteous musician-hating anger, and snatched the guitar away, cursing us. But the spell was broken: the tyrant was revealed as a buffoon, and we weren’t afraid.

Not long afterwards, having found nothing illicit, they reluctantly released us and left. Oh, they were pissed. But they had an evil pothead in custody, and that would just have to do.

It was well after dark. The cops had left a hurricane of destruction behind them. Our friend’s home had been devastated by shock troops, and he was a prisoner in a dirty, pointless war.

Completely freaked out, we lingered for awhile, trying to process the grim turn in our fortunes. Then, one by one, the band went their separate ways. I stayed behind, tried to clean up a little and secure the house.

Then I remembered. I walked back up to the deck, and as the night breeze lifted, I pulled that roach out of the woodwork, lit it up, and let the sweet, heavy smoke fill my lungs.

Let the midnight special, shine her light on me
Let the midnight special, shine her ever-loving light on me

Huddie Ledbetter

Do the Limbo

I tried to listen to the debate yesterday between chores at work — I mean, I really really tried, but finally, despairing of substance, I gave up. By the time I got home I was so sick about the whole miserable performance of ALL the networks, broadcast and cable, that I actually wrote a letter to the ombudsman at ABC — believe me, that’s not something I do very often, talk about pointless behavior…

You may have gathered by now I’m an Obama supporter, but honestly, no one looked good: Clinton, openly gloating, those ‘reporters’ and their moronic questions, the audience, for not booing and hissing vociferously, Obama for dancing with this stupid shit.

Flag pin. Ugh.

The letter:

To: ABC News

Re: The Non-Debate

It’s just too depressing.

The wretched performance by your news department last night actually broke new ground in bad behavior by news organizations. It’s as if you are all engaged in a drunken limbo contest. Congratulations, you managed to stagger under the lowest bar. There’s only one network left that can take the trophy away from you, but I don’t see the Democratic candidates agreeing to go there. They might, I suppose; it’s not like anyone is really shining right now.

So enjoy the Murdoch Cup – you will have earned it. Charles and George can hose down your editorial staff with champagne — unless of course they thought up this perversion all by themselves.

Unreal. Your own company is tanking in this miasma.

Goodnight and goodbye.

Lincoln and Obama

Some of my friends have scratched their heads at my comparison of Lincoln and Obama. Some of them have scratched their heads because their heads itched, too, but that’s another post.

Here’s an interesting piece from the NYRB, check it out.

328

Two years ago. I’ve got several entries in the queue, but I’ve been thinking about old 328 a lot recently, probably because these days I work downtown, and buses and bikes downtown have an bit of an adversarial relationship… see, there’s this one bus I try to beat over the Congress bridge from the light at Cesar Chavez…

__________________

_______________

Somewhere along the way, the bus driver and I began competing. I think it was unconscious at first — certainly it was for me. I always try to beat Bus 331 that runs on Oltorf in the morning, and at least half the time I do, but it’s not really a fair contest; that route has a lot of stops, a lot of passengers, including quite a few high school kids. In front of the grocery store, there’s often 15 – 20 people there, and that’s usually where I clinch the victory, whizzing through the parking lot on my bike — it just takes too long to board all those people.

But I don’t know if that driver even knows I’m there — for me, it’s just a way to get the lead out of my legs and get to work. It’s on my trip home — often in the early evening — where the clear competition exists. Bus 328 has a stop by the IRS Service Center at Parker and Woodward, and that’s where the race begins. We both go west over the freeway, turn north on Congress Ave, and continue to the finish line at Oltorf, where I cross 5 lanes and turn left while the 328 continues on northbound. At first I’d just try to beat him crossing the freeway, and I often did, just because he’s bound to stop at traffic lights, and I’m a free agent. Mostly, though, it’s at the long hill up Woodward to St. Edwards University — the athletic teams there are called the Hilltoppers — that he invariably passes me; he’ll get going 40, 45 miles an hour, and my legs on a cheap mountain bike aren’t going to give me anything like that on a long hill.

I think I started racing first. I only see him once or twice a week, and usually it’s late and usually I’m both tired and eager to get home, so after awhile I became aware I had this pace being set. To try and beat him out I started cutting through the St. Ed’s campus, and sure enough, I’d come out ahead of him, but then he’d still always lumber past me on Congress. At some point I began to feel like I was cheating, though, and I abandoned the shortcut and began going all out trying to beat him on his own route. After perhaps a month of this I realized he was aware of me – there I was, pedaling furiously up the long hill, and I looked to my left and there he was, matching my speed, smiling at me and making a gesture as though he was wiping sweat from his forehead. Then he sped on, and I saw the 4 or 5 passengers all looking at me as the length of the bus went by, and they were all smiling at me, too. At that I threw my whole body into the effort, but it was fruitless – his tailwind buffeted me, the hot exhaust hit my face, and he was gone.

And so it went. Of course this absurd man vs. machine race could never resolve in my favor, but I tried as hard as I could, and of course I kept getting stronger in the effort. The bus driver, smug in his superiority, had taken to waving at me at the moment of losing me, and I’d wave back, smiling, but, while I wanted to be gracious in defeat, I still wanted to take him down.

Then there came a night when I needed to get home in a hurry.

My job just won’t let me go, sometimes, but finally I wrapped it up, quickly put on my shorts, shouldered my backpack, shut down the office and got on my bike. I flipped on the headlight and blinking red taillight and started off fast. Sure enough, at the bus stop at Parker and Oltorf, there was old 328. There’s a traffic light there, and we both waited for green, him on the street, me to his right on the sidewalk. I felt good. I felt motivated.

The light changed, and I kicked it, hard. My initial acceleration is of course better than that of a city bus, but usually within 50 yards he’s well past me — but not tonight. I was going hard enough to beat him to the light at the freeway. It was red. He stopped. I went. This is okay in our unprinted rule book. Don’t ask me why, but it is. I went through both sets of light, a car honking at me for cutting off his right-on-red on the far side. Before the long uphill there’s a shorter downhill, and I geared all the way down, taking every advantage I could gain. Halfway up the hill I could hear him coming up behind me, all metal and combustion, and I pushed so hard I felt I could hear my tendons groan. My breath was coming in ragged gasps, but I wouldn’t relent. Burst, heart, I thought wildly.

Still he passed me, and roared by. I glanced over, but there was no smile, no wave, no gesture. He stared intently ahead, as if he sensed the stakes had somehow gone up. The hill leveled out, and I picked up some speed. I thought about taking the shortcut in the name of victory, but rejected it immediately.

You can win by cheating, but it’s no victory.

As luck would have it, there were a few students waiting at his stop between the 2 entrances to the campus on Woodward, and as he stopped to pick them up, and I shot past him again. I could feel his frustration in a wave through the hydraulic doors as the students, oblivious, sauntered onto the bus. Hurry up, hurry up, he was thinking, this little fucker’s gonna beat me.

A little window of hope opened and oxygen poured into my trembling limbs and with a burst I hit the incline down to Congress and turned so sharply there that I almost lost the bike. I flew off the sidewalk, air under my tires, and hit the street with a teeth-loosening bang. The large rain gutter tried to take my front tire into it. If I’d been going any slower I’d have crashed with a dreadful smack, but after a gut-wrenching wobble that threatened to throw me into traffic, I got it under control.

Now I had a second wind and a major adrenaline dump on my side. I glanced over my left shoulder, and I could see 328 at the traffic light, waiting for a chance to go. I stood up on my pedals, using my arm muscles to help compensate for my rapidly tiring legs. I felt a stitch in my ribcage, but I ignored it. As I approached the light at Cumberland I could hear him speeding up behind me. There wasn’t anyone at that bus stop, and I thought, oh, no, he’s got me now. I had only maybe an eighth of a mile to go, but he had the straight, a green light, and no passengers to pick up. I was going to lose. I was out of energy. My pulse was pounding in my ears, my legs were going watery, my mouth was flooded with the bloody metallic taste of adrenaline and exertion. Still I leaned in, and, gritting my teeth, I lost my temper a little bit. This bus can easily beat me with ounces of pressure on a single pedal. My love doesn’t love me, not like I love her. I leave work after dark and get up long before dawn, an 18 hour-a-day hopeless quest. I’m getting old. My musical life has been derailed. I’m broke.

A ridiculous, pathetic man.

My life suddenly seemed to hinge on this stupid race I was doomed to lose, and I got even madder. In my anger I found the last reserve of fuel — a cellular dump of sugars, combined with sheer pointless will — and I jerked forward as if I’d hit afterburners. I knew this wouldn’t last for more that a hundred feet and then I’d be done, left only to smile, graciously, and wave.

I think 328 had relaxed; I think he meant to sweep by me, fast enough to put me down, but slow enough to rub it in. A little past the Cumberland light on Congress there’s a beauty salon and a motorcycle dealership, and just as my last reserve began to slip away a small pickup jerked out to the street and stopped right in front of me. I swerved around behind him, a blur, a flash in the darkness. In his surprise I think he just tried to get out of my way and pulled out into the street.

Right in front of 328.

I hollered, some kind of bloody Celtic war cry some distant ancestor probably used to scare the Romans half to death, and in elation I shot out across the street, into the center turn lane, and flew towards my left turn.

Our finish line.

I looked back at 328. He’d swerved into the left lane northbound to get around the pickup, but he’d lost momentum. He was done for. He must’ve been able to see the huge grin on my face, illuminated by the bright lights of the grocery store parking lot. He shook his fist at me. I think it was supposed to be a funny gesture — it was to me — but I also think he meant it as a curse, too.

I waved.

On the last leg home, I just relaxed. I sat up from the handlebars, let my arms hang at my side. It was dark and quiet, a cool, beautiful night. A light wind was stirring. My body was returning to normal function very quickly, and I realized – partly because of 328 – that I was in pretty good shape, man my age. I realized my love might love me, at least a little bit, that my job is unusual and fun and challenging, that I had enough money to eat and help friends out of tight spots sometimes, and that sometimes — only sometimes — we can find a way to small, impossible victories against impossible odds and implacable foes.

waitin for that train

I started going on the road when I was in my late teens, early twenties, something like that. Thirty years ago! All I wanted to do was play. I took every gig I could get. On breaks I’d go in the kitchen or outside or maybe sit behind my amp and practice.

Hahahaha, I still do that shit!

I just put down my bass. I’ve been practicing downstairs. Some things never change.

Other things change a lot. Over the last ten years my passion for music hasn’t abated at all, nor has my need to play. What HAS changed how I feel about it, in the world. It’s nice if you like what I play, it’s great if you love it, it’s too bad if you don’t. But I don’t care. I never did.

For a long time, I looked at it like this: if folks liked the music I played, I’d get to play more. But recently I realized 2 things:

1. Shoot, I can play whenever I want to (took me awhile to figure this out, hahaha – hey, I’m a bass player)!
2. I don’t like the music a lot of people like.

That’s what happens when you do anything with devotion and discipline for a long time — you become an expert, right?

– ‘cept in music, it really is purely a matter of “I know what I like” — there’s no getting around it.

What it comes down to, then, is simple enough — what matters to me is making music I like. Everything else is basically curb feelers.

And I do like the music I make. Sometimes. A little. It needs work. A lot of work. I’m in no danger of mastering music, becoming bored, and moving on, THAT’S for sure.

But the idea of posterity, immortality, fame, or adulation? These things just don’t move me, man. They never did. I feel incredibly tired just thinking about them. Money’s fun. If I made a ton of money, I’d do the same thing I did all the other times I made a ton of money –

give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away, now

Even in my occasionally and at best only moderately successful career I’ve experienced packed clubs, gigantic festivals, huge crowds, endless journeys, bottomless sycophancy, smarmy record fucks, shapely women, limos, aero planes, iron horses, and various horseless carriages — you know what I like?

A well turned phrase. A pleasing melody. A powerful groove. An interesting form. A well-told story. Dynamics. Nuance. An exhilarating riff. Huge bass notes that rattle my spine. A drum fill that starts way over there and nails you to the ground. Big spacious beats. Dancers. A really dry ride cymbal. That air splitting ‘G’ on a tenor. The low ‘F’ on an upright bass. That Freddie King E9 chord.

And tone, man. Tone is everything.

And endless journeys and shapely women.

And people who actually listen. That’s very rare, but it’s maybe the best thing of all.

waitin at the train station
waitin for that train
gonna take — take me away
from this lonesome town
whole lot a people put me down
my girl called me a disgrace
she did yes she did

tears burnin
burning my eyes
burning me down in my heart
well you know it’s too bad little girl it’s too bad
too bad we have to part
we gotta part

I’m gonna leave this town
gonna leave this town
gonna find my own way

then I’m gonna come back
I’m gonna buy this whole fuckin town
put it all in my shoe
might even give a piece to you

that’s what I’m gonna do

hear my train a comin

hear my train a comin

– Jimi Hendrix

guess I’ll pick up my guitar and play

1968, Part 2

Luther King is dead

and now

this we cannot avoid

segregation must be destroyed

– The Mighty Sparrow

In April, 1968, I was 10 going on 11, living with my mom and dad in San Fernando, Trindad. My sister was living in the states with my maternal grandmother, finishing out high school. We hadn’t been in Trinidad long, and we were living in the first of 3 houses we’d eventually live in.

I think. I’m talking about a long time ago, and this is how I remember it. There was no sniper fire, I’m sure of that.

My sister and I were expatriate children. My father was the restless sort, as am I, as is my daughter. He took the family overseas when we were little kids. I lived in Venezuela, Trinidad, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

I loved Trinidad best of all. I also loved Ecuador and Peru very much. Venezuela, too, I suppose, but I was very young. My year in Bogotá was haunted by 3 ruthless bullies, a wounded mother, a dying grandmother, and as best as I can remember, not one day of sunshine.

But that’s another story.

Although I didn’t actually start playing for another 5 years, I believe I became a musician in Trinidad. I became a reader in Trinidad, I discovered women in Trinidad, and I made my childhood’s best friend in Trinidad, an enormous, sloppy German Shepherd named Jefe.

In the extended archipelago of the West Indies, Trinidad is unique in many ways. I should probably run to an encyclopedia, but I want to stay in memory for this, so if I’ve got it wrong in some particulars I apologize.

Of all the islands that stretch from Florida to Venezuela in a long arc, Trindad and Tobago are the last of the chain. From San Fernando, where we lived, you could see the coast of Venezuela most days. Trinidad is below the path of hurricanes, or at least that’s the impression I have.

Certainly there is astonishing beauty in these islands, Tobago especially, but perhaps alone of all the islands Trindad and Tobago is an industrialized nation far more than a tourist stop, with oil reserves and considerable refining capability. A great deal of sugar cane is grown there, as well; the second house we lived in was right next to vast field of the stuff. It’s a miracle I still have teeth.

Steel drums were invented there. Trinidad is home to one of the world’s great Carnivals; situated somehow halfway between Brazil and New Orleans, it seems to reflect (or perhaps influence) both. She is also the mother of Calypso, a musical form that arose, like blues in this country, from the need to communicate under the yoke of brutal slavery. Over the centuries it came to embody a groove, as well, but at its root was a necessary extemporization of vital news into a song form full of humor and double meaning designed to obscure important information from the oppressor.

In the time I lived there, Calypso had become the primary source of political discourse and cultural transmission. The song I quote above is by one of its greatest artists, The Mighty Sparrow. Lord Kitchener was another, but my perhaps faulty memory tells me he was from Jamaica and therefore of not the same stature. This might simply be a reflection of the views of the Trinidadians I hung around with, though.

Whatever was happening, on the island or in the wider world, was immediately communicated via these songs. It was in the air. Revolution — political, sexual, cultural — was being spread right under the noses of the rather dour and prudish leadership of the country (I wonder if this is accurate, or my impression; Trindad was recently independent of Britain, and the Queen’s visage was still everywhere). I was hearing new songs everyday. The radio was playing them fast and hot — I’m sure in bars and on street corners the boil was even higher.

Calypso can be likened to blogging, I suppose, in that it was fast, of the moment, quickly consumed and just as quickly supplanted. It differs in that it’s musical, it’s NOT mostly done by unpleasant white people, and no matter the subject matter, it is always delivered with high humor and appreciation of human foibles:

The lizard run up she foot,

and it disappear –

Ev’rybody still searchin ev’rywhere

Where the lizard?

Teacher Mildred!

She makin jolly and happy

I saw the lizard must be ticklin she

Here’s another thing about Trinidad: her population is basically half African and half Indian in descent. The Africans of course were stolen peoples, slaves, but the Indians, many, many of them at least, arrived in Trinidad as indentured servants. That is, slaves with a theoretical freedom clause. Thralldom for, say, 15 years is in no way similar to a job.

In 1968, television wasn’t THAT evolved in the U.S., and it was in its infancy in a place like Trindad. I’m pretty sure it didn’t even start until 5:00 P.M. In any case, we rarely watched it, and there was only one channel. I remember a news show that was basically a news-less organ of State, called Panorama, anchored by a white guy that (in memory) looked for all the world like Jimmy Durante. The other show I remember was Scouting for Talent, an ongoing talent search that seemed to have no goal beyond allowing each and every citizen the chance to perfom. We loved it. Periodically, the emcee guy would holler, “What’s the name of that rum?” and the audience would shout, “Old Oak!”

So my family talked. and we read, voraciously. We took Time magazine with a 2 week time lag, we devoured the local paper, we cleared out the bookstores, we haunted the libraries.

The United States was mired in Vietnam, reviled by most nations, and daily making things worse for herself. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, in places like Trinidad, was viewed as a tiny sliver of proof our whole nation wasn’t completely mad. This brilliant, visionary, miraculously eloquent man who was able to articulate the particular plight of African Americans in mid-century America in terms people everywhere could understand, this political genius who had adopted and adapted the pacifist methods of Mahatma Ghandi to turn a nation of racist laws upside down, it’s easy to see his profound appeal to the people of this half African, half Hindu nation, itself founded in colonialism and slavery.

And on that dreadful day in April, 1968, when Dr. King was murdered by ignorant, racist scum in Memphis, Tennessee, the tiny nation of Trinidad was stricken with grief and outrage and shock and anger. What sort of people are these Americans, that extinguish their brightest lights, one after the other?

I remember hearing Dr. King’s speech (see below) over and over. I remember Robert Kennedy’s speech, which I believe calmed not only Indianapolis but Trinidad — and probably many other nations in the West Indies. Our one TV station, our island radio stations, made sure of it.

And the Calypso artists wrote songs of joy and sadness.

______________________________________________________

I only ever saw my dad cry twice. Once was when John Kennedy was shot. My father, a Republican, wept for his fallen president, a Democrat he detested in normal circumstances. In his invincible conservative worldview, he thought little of Kennedys, or the SCLC, or for that matter, mass movements in general. A child of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, he believed in the ascendancy of the individual. And like Obama’s grandmother, I heard him sometimes say wincingly awful things. He was, as most all of us are, a product of his times. But he was his own man: he knew history, he sympathized with the poor and downtrodden, and he read, as we all did, voraciously. He was no ideologue, he understood the pain and injustice and suffering that was fueling the flames in America.

And he talked to me about it it. Usually in the form of picking a fight, it was nonetheless my own white, conservative, hard-headed, do-it-yourself dad that made sure I knew who Dr. King was. And Ghandi. And for that matter, Stokely Charmichael. Malcolm X. Che Guevara.

He showed me the world around us. He didn’t hide it from me or try to prettify it — he wanted me to think for myself.

And to understand you can disagree, as he and I almost always did, and still love.

_______________________________________________________________________

1968.

It was awful, and it was going to get worse. Cities burned through the summer. Bobby was killed in October. Thousands upon thousands died in Vietnam for reasons no one could articulate at the time, far less now. Blinded by arrogance and a mistaken belief we were powerful enough to do whatever we wanted, we slaughtered countless innocent lives in the name of dubious freedom. Our leaders were willing to tell any lie, but transfixed by their own folly, screwed to a sticking place by illusions of strength and weakness, I don’t think they even felt the depth of their betrayal.

An Evil Foreign Menace, threatening our American Way of Life. Imagine such a notion standing in place of thought.

And those who spoke out against this madness, those who spoke for all beings, those who decried injustice and lawlessness from this nation of great ideals, those who stood up for all of us were shouted down, hated, marginalized, and sometimes murdered.

In 1968.

1968

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

 

 

 

Blessed are the Peacemakers.

RFK – November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968

MLK – January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968