Every junkie's like a setting sun

They woke up to terrible news.

Again.

He had known the man for 40 years.  An addiction that had been fought and won, and then this, the surprise relapse.  Being caught in the headlights, the tiny miscalculation. They used to get high together, in the casual, trippy Canyon-Valley days.  Watching the trees in the rain turn into seaweed.

Now, outside the hotel room, there was ice and snow covering the trees.  He was glad they didn't have to go anywhere today.  Glad to wrap themselves in fancy hotel blankets and have food delivered.

The radio was on, the recurring headline.  "Found with a needle in his arm".  He looked out the window and tried not to think.  Everything was delicately, painfully beautiful. The branches covered in ice reminded him of syringes. Endless, everywhere, dangling, teasing him with their innocence.

His own addiction and recovery and relapse, hidden and secret and tenuous. She had no idea. And he was so careful to make sure she never knew.  How close he had come so many times.

The time they were loading the truck and the guitar was balanced on the edge of the wall.  Knocking it and catching it as it nearly fell the 6 stories.  The knot in the stomach, you going over with the guitar in the air.  Seeing it fall and catching it, oh the good grasp, lucky and random, pulling a success out of fate.
Driving through the snowstorm, visions of sliding at 60 miles an hour, a solid chestnut tree awaiting the impact.  The car in front stopping too quickly, your heart stops. You swerve, always almost too late.  Knowing that one day, it will happen and your reaction will be too slow.

She had seen this guy once in person, an intimate concert.  Had remarked how touched she was by his voice, as if it created its own microclimate.  His voice brought her back to the tiny cabin in the woods, vacations with her parents, when things were happy.

He told her stories, and she, polite audience that she was, listened deep into the night.  He kept talking as he could hear her gently snoring.

He knew it was an accident.  Anticipation and beautiful hunger for this imminent period of creativity.  Floating, swimming, hearing music in your own breath. The last time he had spoken to The Voice, there was excitement about getting back into the studio.

Her breathing had turned quiet.


The Needle and the Damage Done by Neil Young

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/n/neil+young/the+needle+the+damage+done_20099058.html

Gone To Graveyards, Every One

When he first left home to join the fresh faced kids in Greenwich Village, he was not only going after what was cool, but also what seemed important.  It was important to understand, but not ally yourself, with the workers.  You were an ARTIST, with a capital ART. Too many of the kids who came from the upper classes were trying to distance themselves from their parents and too many of the kids from the working class were trying to aspire to the arts.  But the class divides were pretty thinly drawn.

As much as you wanted to be magnanimous, anyone who asked for money too often was a drag.

He felt the sense that his parents were from both the intellectual class and the hard-working class, but not the rich class.  They also were atheist in the way that they believed in personal spiritual enlightenment.   Their churches and temples were replaced with patchouli, scarves and incense.  Scripture was replaced by streetcorner prophets and faith in the voices in their heads.

Turning the corner from Avenue A, off of Thompkins Square Park, he found himself walking west across East 7th Street, his coat too thin and his shoes too worn, he thought about his friends who kept repeating a certain word like an incantation.  "Paradise on Earth is", "He went there and now everyone wants to sleep with him, boys and girls", "Sunshine and beaches as far as the eye can see"

California.  California.  California.

He was running out of money.  As in, he didn't have enough money for aspirin for the hangovers he'd get in the mornings and his upstairs neighbors started belly dancing.  Even his Salvation Army budget was too low to get another sweater when the temperature dropped this quickly.  A sweater or a meal. Even then, he was still living off ketchup soup and other depressing Depression meals taught to him by his grandfather.  And his apartment didn't have heat.  He'd gladly sing and march against his own landlord, but he was never around.  And all his friends seemed to only gather around him in the cafes, wanting company on their terrible songs and even worse voices.

Before he got to 2nd Avenue, he had a revelation.

California. California.  California.

He had come to the Village to sing with Pete Seeger and anyone else who might still be Blacklisted.  To be the next Bob Dylan.  Or at least the next Tiny Tim.  He wasn't sure yet who he was, but he knew he was SOMEBODY and was tired of trying all the different versions of himself out. At first he'd come onstage with a serious reverence for the cause and sing every song he knew (which was maybe 5 for this crowd).  But the crowd just glared at him and the hat that was passed seemed very light. Not even enough for a pity drink.  Somehow the girls dressed in black and their boyfriends looked right through him.  But the night he dropped his guitar and nearly knocked out some of the people in the front row, they woke up.  Maybe it was a matter of making sure he didn't spill anything on them, but they kept their eyes on him.  He tried to make a joke, something self-effacing.  Playing the dummy.  Happens to everyone.

The hat was full that night. He even got dollar bills.

And so the next night, he pretended to drop his guitar, and with the clumsiness of someone trying to pretend to be clumsy, he showed a certain vulnerability.  Just when he had thought that he had failed, a girl tried to chat him up after his set.

A year later, he was an expert at playing the dummy.  But the smart one.  The one who knew politics and only said things that the real idiots were too stupid to think of (SCENE)  Burns and Allen would've been proud of him, getting laughs on jokes they didn't even write but which they somehow taught him over the radio in his mother's kitchen.

He had come to NYC with a banjo on his knee, determined to take over the Folk Music world.  It was the only thing he left for his upstairs neighbor the morning after he bedded her.  Never shit where you live.  And never fool around with your neighbor, she can see every girl you bring in after her.  That's why he waited until his last night in New York.  Plus his landlord was waiting for him in his apartment.

California. California. California.

There was a carfull of his friends leaving the next morning and he decided to be on it.  THe night before was his last folk singing night (even though he didn't know) He had got his guitar out of hock and didn't want to be burdened with two instruments.

Maybe she could take up the banjo.  There was only so far you could go with bellydancing.

Where Have All The Flowers Gone? Pete Seeger