If I wrote a song, she'd know every single word

Some days were better than others, but most days there was a lot of smiles and tenderness.

The way she'd look at him sideways from her mic, him positioned at his mic.  The moments when they'd just dance before the show.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Those were the moments they'd remember.  Setting up, wiggling their hips, carrying the gear into the venue.  She was always smiling.  Sure, there were layers of hurt and bitterness.  But she was unfailingly optimistic, convinced she could charm everyone she came into contact with.  She usually did.

Life is what happens while you are making other plans.  All those moments of rehearsals, waiting around.  As if she was always performing for JUST HIM.  She'd sometimes talk about her "Imaginary Lawyer Boyfriend".

"I can just see him now.  He'll be easy to get along with and buy me things and have intellectual discussions with me.  We'll have a sort of banter that will challenge each other's minds.  And then it will make us all hot in bed.  And I'll end up winning every argument"
"Why? Cause you are the one with the pussy?"
"Yep! And cause I'm real smart!"
"and he'll love that you are smarter than he is"
"Yep.  Right up until the day he has his mid life crisis or is crippled by insecurity.  And finds a girl dumber than he is by multitudes.  And then he'll think, 'She's so easy to get along with,' and we'll get a messy divorce and I'll drink myself into oblivion, wondering where I went wrong and why that bastard isn't with me anymore,"
"Seems like you could save yourself a whole mess of trouble if'n you stayed right where you is"

Suddenly, the years of being single, or singing to herself, of having fun without a significant other or an anniversary, all the empty years when she was accountable to no one but herself seemed full after all.  These years with him, these years without him.  No wedding dance, no books of memories.  Just years of being in the moment.  And some pictures.  The picture of them dancing in the distance at sunset.  Sun on their faces, laughing.  Only slightly awkward in each other's arms.

Somedays she wondered if they were each other's imaginary lovers, brought into being through vivid imagination. Thinking about it made her believe she'd break the spell and disappear into thin air.

* Big Ole Goofy World by John Prine

Why do you look so saaaaaad?

"What is the time signature on this song?"
"Wait, let me listen."

She watched him counting, or rather, trying to.   They had an ongoing fight/joke about who was really leading the beat, which apparently, was something he was adamant about.  He liked to think he was the authority, and was excellent at reprimanding the drummer for every variation in tempo.  She was rather hopeless, and could basically follow when required, but could be relied on to screw up if she ever had to think about it consciously.

This song was a trick question.  Overlapping time signatures, one kept by the percussion, another by the  strings.  Both were complex and from an obscure South American tradition.  The percussion in fact included a donkey jaw bone.  His brow furrowed.  She decided to distract him further by picking one rhythm and dancing to it.  Shaking everything she could, ever so slightly, enough to have him want to  change the subject.

"I had a dream last night.  We were on tour with a big band.  The backup singers were on a tremendously high platform, and one was standing with her back to the edge, her heel over the edge, balancing.  As if she didn't care.   I later asked her how she did that, because I have dreams of such high walls.  And in the dreams, they are terrifying,"
"What did she say?"
"She didn't answer.  And then we were in Northampton, and I felt the sunshine, I mean I FELT it.  Inside of a dream.  I was alone at a canoe rental place by the shores of a lake.  But then the sun went behind a mountain, and then everything got so cold.  But even then, in the cold, I still saw people from tour, and didn't feel alone,"
"I don't think we'll be in Northampton this time,"
"And then you were there, that version of you before we knew each other.  And I spoke so openly to you, so clearly.  And you responded so easily."
"What did we say?"
"You know my friend who has all those boyfriends, she was telling the end of her story, and you asked about me, if I had any significant other.  I said, no, the world is too full of crazy cynical people for me.  You said something about that being a rather sad commentary on the world.  I recognized what I was saying and admitted that it reflected less on the world than on my peculiar stubborn and cynical view of it.  Says more about me than about the world.  We were at lunch and we both laughed.  I was hoping we could talk more like that, but then we had to get back to work,"

He looked at this woman in front of him, so easily seductive on so many levels, yet behind so many walls.  He had no idea how to get inside her.

Confident of the only thing he knew, he began to speak.

"It's 6/8 against 3/4," he said.

*Born with a Broken Heart by David Wax Museum

There is a light and it never goes out

There is a light and it never goes out

He was very surprised when she told him that this Boy had revived himself from the dead.  The boy was a young 50, a boyish face, unaged.  They stood easily as a couple, so much so that it could easily inspire feelings of jealousy.  They bantered well, and seemed to lean into each other, conspiring, whispering, understanding, eyes meeting, smiles and laughter.

She had described this friend of hers in the past tense.  A relationship for her that she knew wasn't mentally healthy, that made her crazy, in her words.  As a matter of fact, with all the references to suicide, this friend sounded, frankly, dead-or at least close enough that you wanted to stay away.

After packing up the gear, she seemed to disappear.  He waited around, took one final look around the place, then guessed that she had gone home with the boy.  He shrugged to himself, trying to brush off the fear he felt for her.  And a slight jealousy.  When he got into the car, she was sitting on the passenger side.  Tired, she claimed, hand over her eyes.  Even with her eyes closed, the tears ran over the dam.

"That was HIM, by the way."
"Him, who? "
"My friend who wanted to kill himself.  The one who is bipolar.  The one whom I love and probably always will.  And who I can't bear to be involved with."
"Why not?  What is it about him?"
"Die happy.  Live sad"
"What?"
"He has such a beautiful smile.  The sound of his laughter. God, I don't remember him laughing!  He still writes to me, y'know.  We lived down the hall from each other and all he did was send me emails.  That was the longest we've ever spent together."
"The longest?  I thought you said that you guys . . ."
"He sent me something out of the blue last week, I don't know what he's doing here.  Always more questions than answers.  Maybe he's doing the cross country thing."
"You knew he was coming?  You didn't say anything."
"He said he was coming to the gig 2 weeks ago and never showed. I forgot.  And frankly, he doesn't show up to things.  He has some kind of thing, kind of an agoraphobia.  I mean, he goes out.  But sometimes, he can't.  I don't know.  He's weird.  It was weirder to see him. He was talking.  Like a normal guy.  He's normal tonight.  Or he seems that way.  It's a Manic thing, he's social when he's manic.  And when he's depressed, he hides in his closet for months at a time. You can see why it's unhealthy to want to love someone like that."
"And he left?"
"I guess.  I walked away and then he wasn't there.  I didn't look hard for him,"
"You didn't tell him where we are staying, did you?"
"Even if I did, I wouldn't expect him to show up"
"That doesn't answer my question,"
"I think there's something compelling about his absence.  There always was. It's so great when he's present, and when he's gone, there's this longing."
"Always leave them wanting more,"
"Like being in love with a ghost"
He gave a her a look, wanting to warn her, wanting to make a joke of it, "I resemble that remark" or something like that.  But she had already gone. Gotten out of the car, running to the figure in front of her motel room door, the one with the smile of a devilish young boy.


The Smiths

You and me and the honeybee

Walking in the Village. Heading to a complicated art opening. California friends who had gotten tangled with an East Coaster. Who should know better, but in the midst of a divorce, she was all too eager to join the cult of endless sunshine. This mutual friend flirted, using naïveté as her main weapon. It seemed to work well for her, but seemed to be a stunningly shallow refuge.

She had eagerly begged for a tour of "his Greenwich Village". Every point on the map began with him saying, "Well, there USED to be a flower shop here. . . " or a gallery or a three story brick apartment house that started life as a home for a single rich family. The tenants shared a grand staircase and each bathroom was carved out of a dining room.

They had committed to stopping for food or coffee at a place he could remember from his time there in 1961. It seemed like a fruitless task and they wandered into the garden behind the 6th Avenue Library.

The tulips were freshly at attention here, further uptown, some had yawned open like a prostitute spreading herself too wide.

The sun was strangely bright and hot, even though it was near evening. The tour had just another week to go and everything they saw had the taint of the ephemeral about it.

Uncharacteristically, she slid her hand into his.
"He's going to break her heart" she said.
"They seem happy" he said.
The birds twittered and flew, dipping their beaks into the Japanese waterfall.
"They don't talk about anything. It's all posing and intonation. All they do is giggle."
"that's the language they speak in California. Substance is nothing, its all about style. Some days it isn't so bad"

He flashed his 50,000 megawatt smile on her at 10%. Looking across the grass, she slipped into his history for a moment.

She felt his innocent marriage in the cobblestones, the old buildings and even the trees around them.  The last witnesses.

Both him and whoever that girl was, his wife, at 18, freshly married, slightly terrified. Running barefoot in the park, the same sun, the same setting, the perfect spring evening she had longed for her whole life. Equally young, equally scared. So little difference in the few trips around the sun between then and now. Nothing seemed changed at all.

*Lazy Day by Spanky & Our Gang

Trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday

He heard her singing like a ghost.

There was something familiar about the way she shied up to the mic.  Mumbled just enough to get the words through a crooked smile.  Acting innocent, and good enough to even make you believe it.

He ached to confuse the two girls.  The one he had known, ages ago, another world away.  Back when he was young.  There was a lot to forget, but she was a pearl.  He remembered her laugh in the darkness.  The way she snuggled up to him and her frizzy hair getting in his mouth.  That was when she was more experienced than he was, in everything, it seemed.

Here, in the present, he had an instant of what she felt like in his arms.  A flash of memory.  The smell of dust burning in the spotlights. The stage carpet feeling soggy with rain, booze and sick.

He was startled by how sharp and clear the memory was.  That night, where they went back to her place together. She wanted to show him something in her home studio.  (Boy, did she show him).   She came out with a guitar and nothing else.  But he had suddenly gone soft and she was wonderful about it.  She whispered, "It's not your prick girls want. It's your eyes."  Her expression turned warm and she touched his face, his eyebrows, nose, freckles and dimple.  The phrase haunted him into many one night stands in the future.  That night they fell asleep making love, tangled in covers and clothes, tired and wrestling and laughing.

In the morning, they did it properly, fiercely.  He tried so carefully, probably came off like a puppy who could't stop licking her. She stopped him.  Explained about going slowly, taught him what she meant.  He took direction easily in those days.

The part of the story he would always leave out was the look on her face as the clock got closer to 9, when his driver was going to pick him up.  How cold she got, how disappointed. He'd see The Face over and over on women.  He kissed her and they talked about getting together again.  A polite line, but he had meant it at the time.

Instead, she made the next move.  A year or so later, her laughing face next to her death date on the newspapers. He had known by then how bad things were getting.  Told her the story about the bass player who passed out during the session.  Maybe he would have gotten her to stop, or pulled the pills from her hand.  It could have been him.  He didn't know why it wasn't.

In the present, in the dive, in the lonely lights, the young band just fooling around.  He sat exactly where he was blinded, where the young singer's face was in shadow, and he kept trying to play the trick of switching back in time.

Back to a world where she was still alive in the same room with him.

*"Me and Bobby McGee" sung by Janis Joplin

I came to you, and you to me

During discussions about doing a video, he told her about how he watched her dancing.  How he created a video of her dancing to a particular song.  How wonderfully she moved.

It was a funny song, one of her favorites.  Nothing that they had ever sung to before, and probably wouldn't.  A complex layering of tempi, starting as a slow soft shoe and escalating into jazz.

He was usually loathe to play with his computer, even the software that allowed him to create things.  BUt since this was a secret and a slight obsession, he was a fast learner.  The tapes were edited and he even shifted the central image onto a third of the screen, so she could dance with herself.  He added colors, until her body was an abstract swirl.  It was like an old school version of a Romp Video from his band, but the techniques which dated those were smoothed out here. This was all line and shadow and sex.  Timeless qualities.

The quality of the film stock was high.  He was surprised at how expensive it looked.  He even sighed when he thought of all the moments in his life he could have sculpted; all those brief projects which never even got off the ground, let alone had anything other than a few lost photos.

She loved it.  So much, in fact, he wished he had saved it for her birthday.  But that might have been putting too many expectations on the thing.  And it might have caught her on a less generous day.

She was always afraid there would be a day when she'd stop dancing.  (Either her physical or mental side would let her down, she was never sure which would fail first)  She was glad to have such a beautiful document of the amazing things she could do once inspired.

He was glad to have something of her to look at on cold nights in the Farmhouse, when he knew that there were few people in the world who didn't hate him.  And that maybe she was still out there dancing somewhere, even if it was without him.


*The Lover's Revolution by Iron and Wine

I think love is only true in fairy tales

I think love is only true in fairy tales

And then, she appeared in his audience again.

Front row, off to the side.  Close enough to make eye contact over the keyboard.  He recognized her immediately, but as per policy, was careful not to offer any signal. The Beloved Mob picks up on the slightest whiff of favoritism from the stage.  They also give off jealous energy when waiting in line, but at least there, they are organized about fondling him.

This time she was silent.  Just watching him.

Afterwards, they talked.  She seemed completely normal. Her eyes were hard. Boring, actually.  Remembered the handicapped bathroom, but didn't seem eager to resume.  He wondered if she'd come back. And asked her why she was here now.  There had to be a reason.

"Because I was in love.  And now I'm not.  And I see you up onstage.  And it's the purest sense of Love I can think of.  I don't have a sense of it anymore in my life now.  But you are the keeper of the flame,"

He was her white knight on a steed after all.  A grown up version of it.  This is what all the fairy tales were trying to tell you Love was about.

They smiled.  She left him with a sense of longing.  He wanted to live up to her ideals.  And for a while, he did.

==

But, sadly, she kept coming.  And the difference between one perfect night and getting to know someone reared its ugly head.  She clapped, but harder and harder.  Even in unexpected places.  After a dozen performances, she began to see through him.  His jokes were terrible, he knew it, the audience knew it.  She laughed at the crickets.  The space after he told the punchline where nobody laughed.  Eventually, she was laughing at him.

She drank.  Yelled things out in frustration.  Nobody else heard it but him.  Fine, she was gonna be One Of Those. A heckler.  Someone so frustrated in their own lives that they pick on him.  This was something he could fight against.

She waited her turn in line for an autograph.  It was never easy to talk, but there was just enough space between them to look each other in the eye.

"Don't you ever shut up?"
"No, frankly, I don't.  You are better than this,"
"I'm doing the best I can,"
"No, you are being careless.  You think everyone's gonna love you, even if you don't try."
"They usually do,"
"But I'm talking about me. I'm out there.  I'm watching."

That night, he couldn't sleep.  She was right.  He'd been slipping for a while now; and she knew enough to tell.  He'd had plenty of the White Knight kind of love in his life.  Smiles and sex were all too easy.  This was a tougher, meaner, truer kind.

This left the happily ever afters in the dust.  


*I'm a Believer by the Monkees

You're Just a Steppin Stone

You're Just a Steppin Stone

They had met years ago.

She fell in love with him immediately.  This was back when he could still get girls with his star power.  Before he decided to settle down for the umpteenth time with a woman who could and would take care of him.  Back when he still had all his Mojo workin on every audience member.

Funny to think that instead of wishing back his twenties, he was now looking back on the glory days of his early 60's.

She was a great dancer.  Sexually adventurous, available and eager.  That beauty of youth that looks the same on every Girl, before she has grown into the Woman.  And she worked hard to stand out in the crowd, to get him to notice her.  He did without her trying, but as usual, he just sat back and let her do her performance.

Yelled loudest.  Danced hardest. She had an award carved.  "Sexiest Man in the World".

There was minimal conversation after the shows.  The band and hangers on would be hanging out. She was too clever.  Her jokes were biting.  She seemed to agree with everyone, told all the band members how terrific they were.  But picked up on subtleties.  She knew they didn't have enough money to keep everything in good repair.  Weren't organized.  A girl like her could really whip them into shape.  In short, she scared him.

He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.  When girls try THAT hard, there is something else going on.  They want the fantasy of "being selected", He seemed to be low hanging fruit, and once she got him, she might get bored.  Move on to someone more famous, younger, richer.  It had happened before.

And then she stopped coming.  Seemed to be talking to some other man in the audience (Wait, wasn't she a lesbian?  Didn't she say I was the only man?)

She stopped coming.  He forgot because he assumed she forgot.

Or worse.  That she had moved on.

As they all do.

When he did think about her, it was in a minor key.  Maybe he wasn't famous or sexy enough for her after all. He had aged out of his Mojo.  He last best chance to Be Used.  And now, he just wasn't useful anymore.


*"(I'm not your) Steppin Stone by the Monkees

You're Gonna Make me Give Myself a Good Talkin' To

He thought that one of her best songs was a Dylan tune, seemingly because it was in a low register for her.  Which was easy, soft and even sexy.

She often avoided things which came too easily for her.  Or made her appear too attractive.  Her subconscious reasoning was to e dismissive of people who liked the simplest things about her.  Somehow she wanted someone who wanted her for all the difficult bits, for the strength of her valor and determination.  And who would fight for her.  Even against the strongest, fiercest enemy.  Which was her.

Even when she figured this out about herself, she couldn't undo the spell.

But he liked it for all the things she wasn't conscious of.  How sincerely she seemed to sing it.  Of course, he imagined that she was always singing it to him, for him, telling him how much she will and does miss him when they are apart.  Without the artificial sentimentality, without any useless romantic promises, with or without sex, with of without music.

He imagined her singing it after his death.

It was quite a remarkable thing, for her to even continue this weird, funny, delightful acquaintance with a man who was only getting older.  Useless to her in terms of fame, money or husbandship or a potential father or employer.

He couldn't imagine why she stayed, and agreed to keep joining him on all these funny tours.  Except for this song.  She misses him.

And he couldn't imagine anyone missing him.

*You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

Go. And beat your crazy head against the sky.

For the past three days, she had been figuring out how to hate him.

And it hadn't worked.

She'd toss and turn after each performance and eventually awake at 2 in the morning to count all the ways he had been selfish.  She could enumerate every instance of his being cranky.  Of all the times he pushed her too hard.  All the songs where he would go offkey.

Still, she couldn't hate him.

The final stop on their tour finally came.  An anticlimax of a bar, called the Robin's Nest, in the middle of New Jersey.  The kind of place that held the midnight of a drunkard's soul at 2 in the afternoon.

"We finally made the big time!"  he shouted as he put his battered guitar case down on the sticky floor.  He looked to her for a smile.  She hesitated, but offered to share his ironic enthusiasm.

"I always knew that you and I would go places; I just never thought we'd end up here,"

They should have been doing the vaudeville circuit; it suited their personalities better. This was the beginning of the end.  The last time they might perform together. Never again would she have their entire set to look forward to.  The camera in her head kept trying to keep every image.  It did't work.

Before they knew it, the show was over and they were packing up.  They lingered over the sound cable they had laid out only 6 hours before.

"You sounded great tonight."
"So did you."
"No, I mean it.  You have quite a future ahead of you, if you want it."
"It only happens when I dance with you,"

Their eyes met.  It was a fleeting, overly sentimental reference to a song from a Fred and Ginger movie.  Something they had seen in a hotel in Wisconsin, during a blizzard, when both of them were sick and miserable.   They had been living off hot cocoa and dried soup mixes, from her emergency kit in the back of the van.

"Did you call that guy?"
"I will, I just haven't gotten around to it,"
"He wanted to book you, you know,"
"I know, next summer, that festival.  You sure you can't do it?"
"Gonna go back into retirement. Shlepping from town to town, I can't do it anymore."
"I know.  That what you said this time too."

There.  She could hate him for giving up.  Especially when he still had plenty of mileage left.  Maybe in a few months, he'd change his mind.

She walked away, carrying the guitar to his van.  Making sure to finally divide their belongings.  She was getting a ride in the other direction from Joe, the drummer.  Maybe if she stole his guitar, he'd have to come get it.  He'd have to come by again and if he did, she could talk him into another round of touring.

Suddenly, he surprised her by hugging her from behind.  He whispered her favorite line into her hair.  They both looked up at the bright cold midnight stars visible through the industrial haze.  They weren't the type to cry on each other's shoulder, or to kiss, or to make long speeches.  So they just stood there,letting the tears fall, but not letting go.



 "Darling, Be Home Soon" by the Lovin' Spoonful

All As Clear As We Long To Be

"Fine, tell me!  Tell me everything you've been longing to tell me.  I'm listening!"

He got out of bed and had been banging around, trying to wake her up.  She sat up in bed, groggy, naked and tangled in the white hotel sheets. Both of them were washed of any negative emotions from last night. But he was frustrated, had a bad night's sleep, tossing, wondering how to ask her to be honest with him.  Things had gotten weird the night before, but they had both attributed it to her being too drunk and too honest.

The bedside clock showed 5:03am, the sunlight was just beginning to light the sky, but he turned on the table lamp.  He plopped down naked in the purple hotel chair.  Usually, he would've put a towel down.  But feeling the velour next to his skin reminded him of his power.  He was still Inconsiderate Rock Star; he could piss on all the furniture and it would only add to his reputation.  There were still a dozen women would would buy this chair on eBay.  Right now, it was his throne.  Inconsiderate Rock Star Ass.  If he was going to let her tell him what was wrong, he wanted to protect himself emotionally, even if the attempt was feeble.

The show last night had bothered him.  It was fine, as usual.  But he wasn't getting laughs from his usual jokes.  Not that he ever did.  And the guitar connection had crapped out on him, even though he had taken it to get it fixed from that guy in the city.  He hadn't tested it, though and was in no position financially to buy a new one.

She hinted at it.  The old jokes that weren't even funny when they were young.  How he handles the audience.  She was his favorite heckler.  Although he hated it, her hinting, her superiority.  He wanted to finally fight with her about it; the passive-aggressive, shy attitude she was copping drove him crazy.  He wanted a reason to hate her.  To dismiss her entirely from his life.  Or maybe, give her that one chance in a million. To be right.

"I'm listening," he said.

"First off, you shouldn't be doing gigs by yourself.  One of your biggest talents is your banter.  It's not a matter of you not carrying a show.  Your body language is more relaxed.  You enjoy it more.  You are a great leader, and you are great at stepping back and letting other people share the spotlight around you. Joe, the guitarist in your band, is incredible. It only makes you better to have him on stage with you. And the smiles on stage, when you are clowning around with A.J., and even then you guys forget to use the mic.  Share the banter."

Damn, she was right.  He was thinking she was going to tell him how unprofessional he was being.  How it finally showed that he was just throwing all of this together.  How he had always been making it all up this whole time, his whole life.  Okay.  He could take that.

"Second, you need to make the first 5 minutes, 10 minutes and half hour COMPLETELY SOLID.  People come to your show, expecting you to fail.  They are looking for reasons to hate you.  The Over-The-Hill-Rock Star, playing in crappy bars.  Or, if you are egotistical, they want to hate you for being good.  Be yourself, present yourself solidly for the first 3 songs; and the self effacing stuff is great, but you need to script it. You do a lot of stuttering.  It makes you look surprised."

What?

"You don't focus on the Patter.  The stuff between the songs.  You're a musician, of course, all of your effort is going into the music.  But WE, the fans, are focusing on everything else.  We already KNOW the songs.  It's the least of the performance.  We're gonna remember WHO you are as you reveal yourself in the spaces between songs.  How you deal with the thing breaking.  We don't mind if the mic is crappy or the guitar konks out.  We are watching like HAWKS to see how YOU handle it.  Are you gonna blow up at the sound guy?  Are you gonna ignore it?  Are you gonna make a joke?  Somehow, it happens at every show and you just look caught off guard and frustrated.  Make it a part of the show.  Understand that you are STILL performing.  You are ROCK STAR from the moment you get out of the van to the moment you get back in.  Now, you seem to only perform when you are doing the songs.  It doesn't matter that you want to think it's different. When you are in the space, doing a sound check, we are WATCHING."

Accept the things you can't change.  He stared down at his misshapen gut, the bellybutton staring up at him like a black hole.  His limpness and his legs slightly different colors.  He wasn't making eye contact because he wanted to hear more of what she had to say. It wasn't so bad.  She's his harshest critic, and the only one he can really believe.  She's seen him for the past 7 years.  She's eloquent.  She has stuff she wants to say, and she's been sitting on her hands for too long.

She's clear.  Clearer than anyone he had the nerve to listen to.  Nothing to gain.

"You have to make the beginning solid, so they'll stll be paying attention when you get to your sweet spot."

"What's my sweet spot?"

"Your best talent.  Yes, you are a great all around entertainer, musician, etc.  Even comedian!  But 3/4th through every show, just when we are all getting used to the performance of this ROCK STAR, you surprise us with the guitar.  You begin to glow.  The past slips away, and suddenly we see you as you are.  This guy who was put on this earth to play.  It's incredible and happens EVERY TIME.  As long as people are paying attention.  That's what I've been trying to tell you.  You fucker.  Now, I'm going back to sleep."

She pulled the covers over her head and he sat, staring at the bed for the next 2 hours until she stirred again.  He didn't move.

"So, help me."
"Okay, get me some coffee first"




"The Poet Game" by Greg Brown

The Breath From Your Own Lips

They were driving home one rainy night after a gig.  Playing together about a year.  Long enough for it to feel long enough.

She was driving, and unusual for her, not singing.  But she was tuckered out, from singing and driving all the way there, doing a full set with intermission and now driving home.

She was just really tired and worn thin.  He was about to fall asleep when he noticed tears rolling down her cheeks.  He couldn't tell if it was a trick of the light; the raindrops, the wipers, the water of the evening.  He asked her, gently and she pulled into a parking lot, 47 minutes away from their destination.  The silent GPS recalculated under its breath.

"The song that came on, I always think of a friend of mine."
"What song was it?"
"You know when you try to talk someone out of suicide, but nothing you say matters?"
"Oh. That.  Um, yeah, I know it all too well."

They didn't say much to each other.  She didn't try to tell him about the year or two she devoted to a friend who had depression, or her best friend from childhood.

He didn't tell her about all the friends he had who he watched drink themselves into a stupor.  Or the times he cursed himself for not being more vigilant over his friends as they drunkenly measured out pills, intentionally or not.

She looked into his eyes and saw pain, even maybe a sense that he had been there himself.  He saw a girl he couldn't comfort. Yet another failure, but a poetic one.  At least this was something that nobody could fix.  He should go home tonight and write a song about it himself.  How Supermen can't bring back the dead.  How Spiderman can't unweave ties that bind people together.  And how that would be reassuring if you want to apply to be a superhero; you'd have your limited skillset.  And not be expected to undo an earthquake.  How relieved Clark Kent must be on a day to day basis.  Were there days when Kent would put down the paper and just go to sleep?  He can't stop wars, he can't stop every instance of cruelty.

He can't swoop into your apartment and tell you what to do when your wife of 13 years leaves you because you were being stupid.  Freud needs a cape, he thought.  He traced his fingernail along the upholstery of the car door.  Or maybe that's the metaphorical power of books, to reach you wherever you are.  You just have to be willing to reach out and pull a book off the shelf; to let the idea reach out to you.

The engine started and startled him.  She seemed composed.  A brief moment, she was hungry, sleepy, wet and cold.  Home, at least, the home of a hotel, seemed like a preferable place to the car.  He wanted to ask her, but now the moment was gone.  She would have shared if she had wanted; at least, in his experience with girls, that was usually the case.  He wanted to tell her his stuff too, but she was in "back in business" mode.  Damn, times like this he wished he could offer her a drink.

He would offer her a shoulder when they got back to the hotel.  She hesitated, wondering what percentage of the invitation involved sex.

She cried herself to sleep that night.  Alone.

*"See What You Lost When You Left This World" - Lucinda Williams

Got to boogie Woogie Like A Knife in the Back

Got to boogie Woogie Like A Knife in the Back

Puppetmaster and the Wa-Twist-i

"Look.  You either do the Twist or the Watusi.  Whichever one you chose, you are just doing it wrong.  It's like this. . . ."

"No, I'm doing a new dance.  It's both.  It's the Wa-Twist-i"

She kept dancing as he laughed all the way to the ground.

She helped his writhing carcass up off the floor as they both laughed convulsively while trying to keep a beat.

Most of the time, there were jokes that "you just had to be there" for.  But sometimes, it was as if their whole lives were filled with music, dancing and laughing so hard you couldn't breathe.

She asked him if he felt like a puppeteer, playing a guitar and having all the Girls dance to his orders.

"Yes," he'd say.  And in a good mood, he'd add: "Except I can't control how good they dance or not. I'm a very clumsy puppetmaster.  I shake the strings and they jump.  Some nights, there is no grace to it at all"

Other nights, he'd capture a moment in his mind, somewhere in his photographic, kinetic memory.  The crowds, the music, how everything came together within his control.  Yet, it seemed like it was him being the puppet.  The tool.  As if the music was using him.  Or whatever the larger power was.  The Magic.

It was how he opened his mouth and the words came.  Or he'd just strum his hand along the guitar strings, and the old hits would come right back.  Done his new way, and with 40 years of experience behind them.

Like really good sex, when it becomes all sensation and pleasure and there is no thinking involved.  Just being in the moment. Your logical brain stops working; you forget your troubles, the presentation you need to prepare for Friday, the accountant not fixing the deductions.

Music was energy, is was gas in your cherry red convertible speeding down Route 66.

It was his other life.  The Real One.  And why he never felt normal being offstage.  The genuinely clumsy version of himself.  Itching to get back onstage.  And then, why was it so easy to fall into that groove?  The music fed him, and vice versa.

It was the closest he would ever come to proof of a Higher Power.

Sea Cruise by JLL

"Come Unto Me" The Mavericks, Specifically

Somehow they had a tradition.

Certain songs brought out certain things in each.  One song, everytime it would come on the radio, she would stop the car, get out and listen to it, leaning on the car.  (They eventually did it as a duet)

Another song, they got up and danced.

The first time, they were both on their computers. A boring, email catch up morning.  She had a look in her eye, which he had always taken before as her Sex Look.  Now he understood it was her Seduction Look.  And it was the same thing she gave the audiences when she was Red Hot.

"You know how to play Mirror?"  And she began dancing.  He couldn't keep up, and was careful not to stretch beyond his boundaries or to make any sudden movements.  Even after a lifetime of yoga, he envied her pure movement.  Matching her body to the music, it was like the dreams he had about flying.

But she was careful to include him, and after a few times, they almost began a routine that accommodated both of them well.  She still rocked out during a few moments, but he would hold himself, waiting for her.  "Come Unto Me", as someone waiting for the seduced partner to give themselves over eagerly.

They made quite an odd pair, but it was a lovely synergy.  She saw them as a series of runers, passing batons off. He had received music from his icons and she would pas hers off when it was her time to.

As they danced, he imagined her easily, years later, long after he had passed away.  He LONGED to see her old, and stopped once on the subway, missed his train, to just stand and stare, subtle-y out of the corner of his eye, a version of her, older.  Older than him, even.  A woman in her 80's.  Bright eyes, mischievous and with a fire still burning.  He wanted to keep looking.  It brought him an ache that had never existed in him before.  He wanted to see her, to watch over her.  To find out how her own story would come out.

And years later, it was the moments of dancing.  Spinning to "All the Things You Are" that she would carry with her. The feel of his thin body against her breasts.  His beard, his boots, stepping on her feet or her stepping on them.  And the smile across his face, as "Come Unto Me" became more elaborate.  Moves worked out, the moment when she spins into him and they look closely into each other's smiles.  His hand holding her balanced in place, against him.  And his eyes, held for just a few beats, until the music kicked in again.

She dreamed she could hold his gaze forever in those beats of silence.

"Come Unto Me" The Mavericks, Specifically