Dating an addict, loving an addict, is hard-if not impossible. You can get sucked into their darkness.
Being with someone with mental issues, it is about battling the dragon.
Sometimes, you need to choose yourself. Even if you don't know what that means.
Every new stage was an unknown, a fun new stage to discover. A topography, a home, the location that gets blessed. The music in the air-so fleeting. All the notes fly off into the oxygen, and like making love-the more intense it gets, the more intense it gets-and then there is a moment when you think of how perfect everything is. And then it is gone.
How do you keep stoking that fire? All the things that were perfectly in alignment somehow disappear. Did you think to enumerate all the things-figure out what it all was?
Unloading the van, counting each bag. Handing it off, trying to locate all the plugs-making the matches. The satisfaction of plugging things in. Unrolling all the cable The dusty black rubbery plastic cable, dirty from all the other floors you've ever been in. The nervousness of everything-will tonight be HORRIBLE? Will this performance be a disaster? (With very few exceptions, its usually not terrible)
The audience always starts out in different camps. The loyalists-the followers who are there at almost every show. Fewer now. Then the ones who come because of the name. Who expect some level of talent, but only bought a ticket to have a story for later. To make fun.
And granted, some wrong notes, with the guitar and with the jokes. The first song is hopefully fast and fun, energetic enough to help us all ride the wave into the music of the night. A bumpy ride, indeed. But he's a master conductor (train metaphor to collide with the wave) and you know he can guide you out of choppy waters.
Smiles, real and fake. Applause, music, applause. Repeat until intermission. A few more songs to get back into the groove and then-we hit the pocket. The pocket of air, he plays and the guitar sings. You sing too, and people complement your voice. It has a certain quality, they say. Not everybody, but enough for you to think it is appreciated. You can't tell, can't be objective about your own voice. This is always how you sounded. Of course, better since singing lessons with good days and bad days. You know when you are in good voice. And when its a bit scratchier than normal. You know that it makes you feel better, euphoric. Even when you are determined to be upset. Or sad. Or annoyed. The clear note of your voice sailing across the room, filling it up, blending with him. Laughing. It feels like laughing. Or kissing.
But you stop singing and he plays in the pocket. His guitar takes over and suddenly everything is floating on a trance.
Unplugging. Keeping busy so that you can't talk or reflect or get sad. So much to track, selling cds (hopefully) make sure you take everything back that you had arrived with. Except said cds, which hopefully get exchanged for money, but more often go for smiles, for favors. Sweetening the deal.
You can't shake the fact that everything else after The Pocket is a let-down. The audience imagines that its a door he's opened, that he can name an emotion they've never felt. That he has created something. But any connection is just with the plain old alcoholic that came in the door. He's a faulted man with an amazing gift. And no amount of normal human conversation can bring it back.
And so we can be gone before they figure it out. Be Good or Be Gone.
We are gone.
