6th
Night Time Damnit
it is night time damnitall. I went to eat alone (again) and that was nice. Pink Pony. Great pate’. Salad Nicoise’. a Pierce, from Alabama or two were seated at the bar. This man, this man sat next to me between myself and them. As he left he said something to me about how I should release a record like the live song he heard on the Rollins Show. And for two whole minutes I did not understand him. Half of that was he was on my left and I am basically deaf in that ear now. The other was I forgot I played music. I actually physically and emotionally broke down totally after the tour. It was very intense. I have never been so low. It felt like I lost everything. I kind of did. I think I spent everything I had on those shows. I broke “me”. Then there was a long time I just slept in the middle of all my stuff. I packed my stuff and just made a bed in the few things I still treasured. Most of those things are now in a landfill or a salvation army now. Thank goodness.
So now it is night. It is night inside. Night outside. And it is very quiet in here. And out there. And I don’t mind. I might not ever really understand a light, not in the way that if you were to plant a lightbulb you would expect a field to grow lamps. Not in the way a moth might, if he were to lose himself, or she herself, in that same light and burn into a pharaoh’s feverish dream- and burn into nothing.
I just am not the same.
I just am not the same.
I saw Catherine Popper who played bass guitar in the original line up of the Cardinals tonight and I left the place as she ascended the stage, it immediately reminding, for the first time since I stood there, what electricity means when a person who does not question things like mountains or waveforms uses their hands to produce magic. magic like grandparents distracting a child from a bloodied knee with a coin from behind the ear. earth. dirt.
Still she is my favorite bassist on earth. Maddeningly great. Monk great. Dolphy self-conscious. She looks up when she knows she is too aware of her playing. Truly sick. I left feeling full. Like I swallowed an ocean for a single fish.
And it is night time again damnitall.
I feel like a return to the cave will let the harvest age and the growth get heavy so that my weeding through will have meaning and take greater bouts of strength. If I am ever going to understand art, I better get some rest, and put my shoes on one at a time and consider this equation…
what am I now without strength as my hand let’s go of faith, to be lighter than one more thing?
hmmmmmmm.
night
