I'm kind of depressed.
My car's in the shop. I've been having problems with my ISP.
But that's not it.
You see my book ended. This is why I don't read them. Because they END!
Books are not like records. Not made to be played again and again. Rather, it's a one time journey.
Oh, those assholes who tell you they're rereading something, they're missing the point. A book is an ADVENTURE! It's a JOURNEY! You start HERE, and you end up THERE! And if you already know where you're going, it's just not the same. Kind of like life. When you break up with your live-in girlfriend, don't get back together. It never works. After you've ascended the peak, and then tumbled all the way back down, you can't climb back up. You're burdened by what you already know. You're trepidatious. And the same pitfalls, the same loose rock that got you the FIRST time, is STILL THERE! Which is why you've got to start again with somebody new. To do otherwise would be to deny nature. We're inured to the new. If we stay with the same, and it's bad, we're just negating our existence.
Not that you can't get the same hit, the same JOLT, from a record as you can from a book. It's just that they don't make those records anymore.
USED to be record-making was an art. Unto itself. To be an ALBUM ARTIST was to play at the pinnacle of the game. The lightweights made singles, the true artists delivered COLLECTIONS, an entire EXPERIENCE!
Well, I've got to give props to Green Day. They did this.
But "American Idiot" is the work of adolescents. PUNK is the medium of adolescents. A veritable Peter Pan village, where nobody ever grows up. Which is why you don't really want to see a Sex Pistols reunion. You liked it better when Johnny Rotten was in his early twenties, railing against the system, railing against LIFE! But now he's just another middle-aged, overweight guy trying to make a buck. Better to switch gears completely and become a deejay like Steve Jones. At least it's NEW!
But being a deejay isn't being an artist. Oh, it's SOME KIND of artist. But not the kind that points us in a direction, changes our lives.
In the fall of '76, I was more depressed than I am now.
It had been a bad run. For the better part of a year. I choked and didn't qualify for the PFA (Professional Freestyle Associates) tour. And that left me in Utah wondering what I was DOING there. Oh, eventually I participated in the new Chevrolet tour, but by this time, I realized my life was going in the wrong direction. Instead of moving forward, I was getting caught up in a backwater. I was just another Utah ski bum with five pairs of skis and free Smith goggles living on next to nothing.
And then I got the world's worst case of mononucleosis.
And then I went to law school.
What can I tell you, it was a way out. My father said he would pay. I jumped the track from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles and started over.
But I wasn't happy.
The guys in Utah weren't my people.
And neither were the students in law school.
It seemed that I'd run out of options. I didn't fit in. No one understood me.
And then I got "Hejira". And heard "Song For Sharon".
You know you occasionally hear a song from "Hejira" now and again. Maybe "Coyote". Or "Black Crow". But you never hear "Song For Sharon".
You've got to meet "Song For Sharon" halfway. Kind of like an Antonioni movie. On the surface, it doesn't make sense. But if you give it time, if you cut it a break, its greatness is revealed.
Oh, it's not that the LYRICS are incomprehensible, rather the music is so DIFFERENT! It's not catchy, it has almost NO changes. It's as if you've gotten in a rowboat on a placid lake, and the oarsman is pulling in a constant, unwavering rhythm. One not guaranteed to get you there fast, rather a groove slow and steady, allowing you to contemplate your surroundings.
"I went to Staten Island, Sharon
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin"
Today's executive gurus tell "artists" to deal in PLATITUDES! Make it so EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD can understand it.
Ironically, just the opposite is true. The more personal you get, the more people can relate. If you draw a picture, a very specific picture, they can SEE IT! And once you get this picture in your mind, you can't FORGET IT!
Isn't that always how it is. You're doing one thing, and something you notice in passing, it starts a whole flow of memories, IT'S the reason you're on this journey.
And that's what "Song For Sharon" is. That's what HEJIRA is. An ADULT on the journey of life. Looking for answers. In a world that truly isn't interested in them. Modern media portrays life as a game of Twister. You've got to rush, you've got to find a spot, or else you're OUT! But really, if you follow this prescription, you MISS out. Because only in contemplation can life's mysteries be revealed. And it's these mysteries that make life worth living.
"I can keep my cool at poker
But I'm a fool when love's at stake
Because I can't conceal emotion
What I'm feeling's always written on my face"
I'm in a running e-mail dialogue with a woman in Canada about connection. She e-mailed me that EVERYBODY wants to connect, the question is whether they're CAPABLE of it.
I responded that I thought the best seller had it right. That these women I'm confused about, the ones I can't interpret the signals of, they're just not that into me.
Ever feel that you can see the whole game, that you're fully aware, but nobody else is paying attention? FURTHERMORE, that you're TRANSPARENT! That everybody can see you observing, and is judging you for it?
That's how I feel. All the time.
And that's how Lee, the main character of "Prep", feels too.
You walk through life, feeling nobody's on your wavelength, and then you turn a corner and find you've got a soulmate.
And then you never want to let them go.
But Lee graduated from Ault. The book ended.
Oh, Lee's not a real person. Then again, Curtis (Elizabeth really) Sittenfeld WROTE this book. SHE must understand. SHE must be on the same wavelength. And then you realize that this is the American paradigm. Hero worship.
It's just that in days of yore, people DESERVED this adoration.
I'm not sure of the public's fascination with Paris Hilton. What did she ever DO?
Then again, I'm savvy enough to know that really nobody cares. Rather, the system NEEDS Paris Hilton. To sell magazines, to sell dumb TV shows.
And on some level, this is the way it's always been. But it used to be that the irrelevant was TWENTY percent of the sphere. Now it's EIGHTY PERCENT!
Doubt me?
Why is it that sales are the barometer of quality today? Really, that's all the mainstream music business is interested in.
But it didn't used to be this way. Before SoundScan, before the average person knew what "Billboard" WAS, never mind the Top Ten records, it was artistry that was revered.
And there was no greater artist than Joni Mitchell.
Oh, she's been lauded a good deal in the last ten years. But honors miss the point. It's home alone, listening, that makes you fully appreciate the art.
"Dora says, 'Have children!'
Mama and Betsy say-'Find yourself a charity.
Help the needy and the crippled
Or put some time into Ecology."
Well, there's a wide wide world of noble causes
And lovely landscapes to discover
But all I really want to do, right now
Is...find another lover"
That first Thanksgiving in Los Angeles was torture.
That's what the involved don't understand. That single people don't WANT a long weekend. We don't WANT a respite from the action. We LIVE for the action.
And contemplating the deadly Christmas vacation a few weeks later, I decided to make a move.
That's how it works. You become POSSESSED! You do things you wouldn't do in your right mind. But you're not in your right mind. You know you just can't stay where you are anymore. Something's got to CHANGE!
I picked up my schoolbooks and drove thirteen miles to the law library. Hoping that cute girl I'd spoken to in back of the school building would be there.
She was.
But after spending the evening telling each other our life stories, a few days later, when I asked her to go see "Rocky", she told me she was busy. And then disappeared.
But the first day classes resumed in January, when I'd already given up on her, the seed I planted flowered. She tracked me down. She called me.
And after going to the revival house, she came back to my apartment. Where I told her how depressed I'd been, and played her "Song For Sharon".
A recipe for disaster according to the dating books.
But disregard anybody who tells you how to live your life.
Rather than killing it, this woman was now intrigued. No, not intrigued, ENRAPTURED! I went from a zero in my mind to a hero in hers just by being myself.
"Sharon you've got a husband
And a family and a farm
I've got the apple of temptation
And a diamond snake around my arm
But you still have your music
And I've still got my eyes on the land and the sky
You sing for your friends and your family
I'll walk green pastures by and by"
I lived with that woman for years.
But I married someone else.
But now they're both gone.
I yearn for my ex less than I used to, but the pangs come now and again. Completely unexpected. Like looking at the Stowe ski report and realizing the last time I was there was with her. And how she loved visiting all my old haunts with me.
But deep inside, I know that was a long time ago. Whatever we had between us could not be recaptured now.
Then again, we were never meant to be together forever anyway.
The person I'm meant to be with gives me more feedback. Is more irreverent. Is new.
My life is not like it was in the fall of '76. Rather than having nothing going on, rather than starting over, I'm forced to pick through the plethora of options that come my way.
But I'm looking for a co-pilot. A compadre. A partner in crime.
Can I admit I'm always looking for this person? Even sometimes when I'm involved?
People are so different. You weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each. You don't want to pick up the Chance card and be forced to spend time in relationship Jail.
Then again, if you don't take chances, you've got no life.
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