'The Place' was one of those local, cleverly named college town bars that don't have much to look at inside. It survived by reputation, generation to generation, brother to brother, senior to freshman, and in the off college season relied on atmosphere and local characters for survival. It was your old fashioned type of establishment with a mahogany bar, a few booths and tables, and a mirror behind the bar to make the room seem larger. There was an adjoining room with a stage for local and touring bands to play. When it wasn't in use, the room was dark and closed off, the darkness spilling over into the bar. One afternoon I was sitting in the bar, I was still getting over Deidre, because doors don't close as easily as we’d like, and chapters of our lives don't end as neatly as chapters in a book. I don't remember if I was in a good mood, bad mood, I was just trying to feel something. There were only a couple other people in there, I was playing Doors song after Doors song on the jukebox. There was a guy sitting two stools down from me, he looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. The music made the place seem hopping, we were bopping around on our stools, hands and fingers tapping out the time to the music. We were both singing along. Although we were both digging the music, we hadn't said anything to each other, but if you hang out in bars long enough you’ll drink enough to talk to everybody.
“You know,” I said, to the room “I probably know the songs better than Morrison, I’ve been singing them longer.”
"You like The Doors?"
"Yeah, Morrison was great," I said. He nodded his head agreeing with my ridiculously simple assessment. "You know," I said, "I should start a band that covers Doors songs, and everybody would think they're originals, especially some of the more obscure ones. I mean I saw Blood, Sweat, and Tears a few weeks ago at Summerfest, and David Clayton-Thomas was the only original guy from the band. The band he had didn't look at all interested in the music, except to pickup a paycheck. I know some other bands from the sixties are touring again, but with Morrison dead we'll never see The Doors."
"I saw them live a couple of times back in the sixties." He said.
"Really!" I asked excitedly, "what was it like?"
"You saw Morrison up there on stage, and he was just singing those songs," He said, holding up his cigarette, punctuating each statement by stabbing it in the air. "But somehow you knew just by looking at him he was singing about existence. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah, I think so," I said, thinking about it for a minute, "most people don't even seem to remember them much anymore."
"It's the kinda feeling I wish I could get into my writing." He said.
"You're a writer?" I made a mental note, you never knew what form your big break would take.
"Yeah. Just a little local journalism, nothing to write home about, as it were." He said, then he looked at me "You really like The Doors?”
“Yeah! I think I can link The Doors to any modern band.”
“I bet you could!” He said, “Ray Manzarek is playing down in Chicago tomorrow night, wanna go with me?"
"Really?" I asked. "Cool, yeah, I'll go!"
"I'll meet you here tomorrow about three, all right?" He asked.
"All right! I'll be here at three!"
"Well, I gotta be going, nice talking to you." He said as he got up.
"Hey," I said, "what's your name?"
"Jim," He replied. "Weird huh?"
"Yeah, I guess." I said, puzzled why he thought it was weird.
(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal (jymwrite@aol.com, please don't forget your mailing address!)
Chapter VI: Meeting Ray
Showing posts with label The Last Stage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Last Stage. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The View From The Audience
While Deidre and I were waiting for the truth to reveal itself, we still had Rock 'n' Roll in common, we went to Milwaukee's Summerfest. We walked around the grounds, arm in arm, to all the different pavilions. First checking out all the typical carnival rides, roller coaster, merry-go-round. We visited the little bijouteries selling silver rings and gold crosses. We wandered in and out of the maze of booths of various craftsmen selling their homemade leather goods, caricaturists, artists, all the way down to women selling macramé plant holders. Then came the food pavilion where you could get the all American favorite pizza, fresh hot pretzels, shish-ka-bobs, corn on a stick, and Baklava. After eating we decided it was time for a beer, so we walked over to the Oktoberfest tent. We sat down at a picnic table in the pavilion to drink our beer.
"We still have a while before any of the musical acts start." I said.
"Do you want to go on some of the carnival rides?" She asked enthusiastically.
"No!" I said facetiously, looking as shocked as I could, "did you ever see those guys that put them together and run them? I'm surprised there isn't a tragedy every year, trust decreases as the number of tattoos increases." She giggled.
"Let's go over to the Marcus Amphitheater and see what time the different concerts start." She said looking at a brochure she taken out of her purse, which always made me flinch as I had an abhorrence of brochures and itineraries, a leftover from rigidly scheduled family road trips as a kid. "By the way it looks on the map, it's right around the corner from here."
"Let's have another beer, then go over." I said.
The Marcus Amphitheater rose out of the concrete like a shrine, the Taj Mahal amid the temporary or semi-permanent buildings of the rest of the fairgrounds. It was closed, a swinging gate chained and locked impeded our path to venture any further. There was a placard in front of the building listing all the shows, including the free ones. Huey Lewis and The News was the headlining act. It was thirty-five dollars a ticket to see them.
"I thought all the shows were free."
"Do you want to see them?" Deidre asked.
"The question is do you want to pay to see them?"
"Let's see Blood, Sweat, and Tears featuring David Clayton-Thomas." I said, reading the placard. There seemed to be three levels of show business visible, the headlining act playing the amphitheater, the 60's nostalgia acts were playing on the concourse, and a couple of stages were set up out in 'the meadow' playing unknown up-and-coming bands.
Bands from the 60’s had been touring the nostalgia circuit for a couple of years usually only with a key player or two from the original band. The names of the bands of my youth, Uriah Heap, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Bread, were all ancient history to me, relics of my past. I can't even tell you what most of them sounded like now or the titles of their songs, but to Deidre they were a rich living history. The world she grew up in was a response to the 60's, so seeing these groups was like a chance to see John Kennedy alive, or at least a Civil War reenactment.
As we walked up the concourse the stages were nothing more than a trailers backed up onto the concourse, parked sideways, and the sides opened and propped up to make 'the stage'. A little green fence kept the spectators separate from the band. Everyone pushed to the front to see the band, and get off the concourse. If you weren't paying attention as you walked down the concourse you could find yourself part of an audience and not even realize it. We found the pavilion where Blood, Sweat, and Tears were playing, the band was already on stage, waiting, talking among themselves, their guitars hanging at their waists. They all seemed to be nineteen or twenty, they were lean, dressed in dark pants, wide belts, dangling earrings, headbands and pouffy hair. They would've looked more comfortable in bands like Duran Duran, or Flock of Seagulls than Blood, Sweat & Tears. There was a surge of excitement as David Clayton-Thomas walked onto the stage. People pressed in from behind to get closer. He was dressed in a white shirt and Khaki's, the tight fitting clothes and flowered patterns of youth gone. A thrill ran through me as the band started the first song. I found myself part of the faceless crowd, yelling to distinguish myself from them, as they were trying to distinguish themselves from me. I listened to the band. They were sloppy, missing cues, not bothering to play the songs faithfully. Even though I was never a Blood, Sweat, and Tears fan, it bothered me that the band didn't know the songs well enough to play them well, or didn't care how well they played. Didn’t they know they had a job a lot of people would kill for, they had the spotlight and adulation, but they didn’t have to sacrifice for it, it wasn’t theirs, it was a job, and they might as well have been washing dishes or slinging hamburgers, they were refugees from their dreams of fame and fortune, hired guitars too young to remember when the band who's name they were playing behind was alive and vibrant, and had meaning.
“I can do better than that.” I yelled to Deidre.
“What?!”
"It should be me up there."
"Men always want to see themselves as the hero of the story."
"What?" I asked.
"I read somewhere that people have the propensity to see the human face in random things, men want to see themselves as the hero." I had to admit that was the most insightful thing she had ever said.
"I still say I can do that better myself."
"Then why don't you?"
"Do what?"
"Ever since I've been with you, you've said you can do this or that better, or that someday you're going to be great. Why don't you do something?"
"I am." I said.
"What is that?" She asked, her voice suddenly changed, she was angry, she let go of my hand, "do you want me to tell you the truth?" This wasn't the first time we'd been through this, but it was the last.
"No, I don't want to know the truth, the only truth is what I create."
"Well, what is that?" She snapped, and went back to listening to the band.
"Never mind." I said.
"See, you won't even tell me what plans you have. You vaguely mention how someday you'll be famous, but not how. You're not in school, you don't do anything that I can see. It's like that Steely Dan song," and she quoted the lyrics, “you've been telling me you're a genius, since you were seventeen, in all the time I've known you, I still don't know what you mean.” All you do is sit around getting stoned, and listen to The Doors." She stood there looking at me.
“I’m searching for something new, some new world of thought and feeling.”
“What the hell does that mean?” She asked.
“I don’t know, but when I find it I’ll know.”
"You know, we could do anything together, if you'd just trust in me enough to let me in on what you want to do. You never know, I might surprise you, and might want to come along for the ride."
"I don't know, all I have is this vague feeling that something great is inside me. I don't know how, what, or why. I just feel it, but I can't ask you or anyone else to wait for anything that ambiguous. I want to be interviewed, I want leather pants, I want groupies, I want to scream, I want to dance."
She put her arms around my neck, looked into my eyes, I could feel her breasts sliding across my chest, "you're my rock star."
"Knock it off." I said, pushing her away.
“Why can’t you just be?” She asked me, “why isn’t any experience enough for you? How come I’m not enough for you?” I knew the answer she wanted to hear, the answer I probably should have given her, the answer she probably deserved. But I didn’t know what to say. "Fine.” She said coldly, “if that's what you want, do it, you deserve it. Do it with some little girl who doesn't care enough about you to tell you the truth, go to L.A. and find the happy ending." People had started to notice our argument, a small circle had formed around us, little did I know how soon it would be when again I’d be at the center of a circle with spectators all around. It was a small conception. The next day she moved out of my trailer, only coming back later that week to pick up her things. A couple of months later I heard she had moved in with some guy and they lived happily ever after, I guess.
A door closed on that part of my life.
(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal, please don't forget your mailing address!)
Chapter V: The Place
"We still have a while before any of the musical acts start." I said.
"Do you want to go on some of the carnival rides?" She asked enthusiastically.
"No!" I said facetiously, looking as shocked as I could, "did you ever see those guys that put them together and run them? I'm surprised there isn't a tragedy every year, trust decreases as the number of tattoos increases." She giggled.
"Let's go over to the Marcus Amphitheater and see what time the different concerts start." She said looking at a brochure she taken out of her purse, which always made me flinch as I had an abhorrence of brochures and itineraries, a leftover from rigidly scheduled family road trips as a kid. "By the way it looks on the map, it's right around the corner from here."
"Let's have another beer, then go over." I said.
The Marcus Amphitheater rose out of the concrete like a shrine, the Taj Mahal amid the temporary or semi-permanent buildings of the rest of the fairgrounds. It was closed, a swinging gate chained and locked impeded our path to venture any further. There was a placard in front of the building listing all the shows, including the free ones. Huey Lewis and The News was the headlining act. It was thirty-five dollars a ticket to see them.
"I thought all the shows were free."
"Do you want to see them?" Deidre asked.
"The question is do you want to pay to see them?"
"Let's see Blood, Sweat, and Tears featuring David Clayton-Thomas." I said, reading the placard. There seemed to be three levels of show business visible, the headlining act playing the amphitheater, the 60's nostalgia acts were playing on the concourse, and a couple of stages were set up out in 'the meadow' playing unknown up-and-coming bands.
Bands from the 60’s had been touring the nostalgia circuit for a couple of years usually only with a key player or two from the original band. The names of the bands of my youth, Uriah Heap, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Bread, were all ancient history to me, relics of my past. I can't even tell you what most of them sounded like now or the titles of their songs, but to Deidre they were a rich living history. The world she grew up in was a response to the 60's, so seeing these groups was like a chance to see John Kennedy alive, or at least a Civil War reenactment.
As we walked up the concourse the stages were nothing more than a trailers backed up onto the concourse, parked sideways, and the sides opened and propped up to make 'the stage'. A little green fence kept the spectators separate from the band. Everyone pushed to the front to see the band, and get off the concourse. If you weren't paying attention as you walked down the concourse you could find yourself part of an audience and not even realize it. We found the pavilion where Blood, Sweat, and Tears were playing, the band was already on stage, waiting, talking among themselves, their guitars hanging at their waists. They all seemed to be nineteen or twenty, they were lean, dressed in dark pants, wide belts, dangling earrings, headbands and pouffy hair. They would've looked more comfortable in bands like Duran Duran, or Flock of Seagulls than Blood, Sweat & Tears. There was a surge of excitement as David Clayton-Thomas walked onto the stage. People pressed in from behind to get closer. He was dressed in a white shirt and Khaki's, the tight fitting clothes and flowered patterns of youth gone. A thrill ran through me as the band started the first song. I found myself part of the faceless crowd, yelling to distinguish myself from them, as they were trying to distinguish themselves from me. I listened to the band. They were sloppy, missing cues, not bothering to play the songs faithfully. Even though I was never a Blood, Sweat, and Tears fan, it bothered me that the band didn't know the songs well enough to play them well, or didn't care how well they played. Didn’t they know they had a job a lot of people would kill for, they had the spotlight and adulation, but they didn’t have to sacrifice for it, it wasn’t theirs, it was a job, and they might as well have been washing dishes or slinging hamburgers, they were refugees from their dreams of fame and fortune, hired guitars too young to remember when the band who's name they were playing behind was alive and vibrant, and had meaning.
“I can do better than that.” I yelled to Deidre.
“What?!”
"It should be me up there."
"Men always want to see themselves as the hero of the story."
"What?" I asked.
"I read somewhere that people have the propensity to see the human face in random things, men want to see themselves as the hero." I had to admit that was the most insightful thing she had ever said.
"I still say I can do that better myself."
"Then why don't you?"
"Do what?"
"Ever since I've been with you, you've said you can do this or that better, or that someday you're going to be great. Why don't you do something?"
"I am." I said.
"What is that?" She asked, her voice suddenly changed, she was angry, she let go of my hand, "do you want me to tell you the truth?" This wasn't the first time we'd been through this, but it was the last.
"No, I don't want to know the truth, the only truth is what I create."
"Well, what is that?" She snapped, and went back to listening to the band.
"Never mind." I said.
"See, you won't even tell me what plans you have. You vaguely mention how someday you'll be famous, but not how. You're not in school, you don't do anything that I can see. It's like that Steely Dan song," and she quoted the lyrics, “you've been telling me you're a genius, since you were seventeen, in all the time I've known you, I still don't know what you mean.” All you do is sit around getting stoned, and listen to The Doors." She stood there looking at me.
“I’m searching for something new, some new world of thought and feeling.”
“What the hell does that mean?” She asked.
“I don’t know, but when I find it I’ll know.”
"You know, we could do anything together, if you'd just trust in me enough to let me in on what you want to do. You never know, I might surprise you, and might want to come along for the ride."
"I don't know, all I have is this vague feeling that something great is inside me. I don't know how, what, or why. I just feel it, but I can't ask you or anyone else to wait for anything that ambiguous. I want to be interviewed, I want leather pants, I want groupies, I want to scream, I want to dance."
She put her arms around my neck, looked into my eyes, I could feel her breasts sliding across my chest, "you're my rock star."
"Knock it off." I said, pushing her away.
“Why can’t you just be?” She asked me, “why isn’t any experience enough for you? How come I’m not enough for you?” I knew the answer she wanted to hear, the answer I probably should have given her, the answer she probably deserved. But I didn’t know what to say. "Fine.” She said coldly, “if that's what you want, do it, you deserve it. Do it with some little girl who doesn't care enough about you to tell you the truth, go to L.A. and find the happy ending." People had started to notice our argument, a small circle had formed around us, little did I know how soon it would be when again I’d be at the center of a circle with spectators all around. It was a small conception. The next day she moved out of my trailer, only coming back later that week to pick up her things. A couple of months later I heard she had moved in with some guy and they lived happily ever after, I guess.
A door closed on that part of my life.
(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal, please don't forget your mailing address!)
Chapter V: The Place
Post Graduate Work
I lived simply to keep my freedom intact. I bought a trailer outside of town picking up jobs as I needed them, janitor, convenience store clerk, telemarketer, gas station attendant, everything except Indian Chief. I only took the jobs to finance the buying of bootlegs and books. I wanted but didn’t want the things that my contemporaries sought out, a kick ass stereo, a hot car, a big house, those things that salved their conscious of abandoning their dreams. I wanted more. If a job started to last too long, or started making too many demands on me, I quit. I wanted to be free.
I found the buying of bootleg concerts provided the same thrill as scoring dope. You had to know someone, who knew someone who was "dealing". Connections were loose, people tenuous. On the way to a "score" I'd look over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't being followed, and that no one suspected what I was up to, which may have lead people to suspect I was up to something much more illegal. And you had to be wary of new people. Were they trying to rip you off? Were they trying to sell you a commonplace concert that everyone has and they just added on some songs from another concert or cut a tape short? Were they "narcs" from the RIAA's police, or cool like you, just trying to score some stuff? And once you got your "stuff'' you ran off to the secrecy of your own pad to ingest the substance. In this case, listening to your contraband concert. A totally furtive lifestyle.
In a college town there's a new influx of excitement and adventure every fall, in the form of a new class, especially the girls. My brother and sister always teased me, asking if my girlfriends were at least eighteen, it was just that as I got older, my girlfriends didn't. Most of the girls thought I was a local and didn't fit their definition of success. They were unimpressed with my dreams, and they would soon be off to trendy careers and successful husbands anyway. They were interested in one thing, and it wasn't the one thing I was interested in. The girls I did interest ran from the neo-hippie chicks who loved to wear tie-dye and have sex, which they considered a form of rebellion, but as their graduation loomed and their rebellion came to an end, so did our relationships. Then there were the girls I always seemed to fall for, the girls with purple hair and problems. They were the wildest. But I was saving myself, not from sex, they were the type of girls that you could take to the bars and concerts, but I was looking for someone more in line with my ambitions. I started to see the passage of classes as the passing of seasons, one piling upon the other. First there were a few, then a handful, then more and more, until I became worried the passage of seasons was becoming too many.
I had just broken up with my last girlfriend, Deidre. We'd had an on again, off again relationship for about a year. Whenever we had a fight, or she was acting like she wanted something more from the relationship, I sent her home. She wasn't beautiful, but she wasn’t ugly either, and there was something latently sexual about her. She was twenty-one to my thirty, and I liked her because she wore low cut blouses, short skirts. I guess I wasn’t very good on waiting for all the rewards later, there were other benefits to be had, namely blow jobs, I knew the luxuries would come later. The ironic thing was she turned out to be a local, and not from the college. She was a Rock 'n' Roll chick through and through. She had a collection of black concert T-shirts from the 70's, which in some kind of relativistic universe should have made them antiques. The glass of her vanity mirror was almost obliterated by the ticket stubs of every concert she'd ever been to. She was not quite a groupie, and something more than a fan. It was like she lacked the imagination or perhaps the ambition to be a groupie, I knew almost from the start it wasn't going to work out. I met her at a party. I didn’t notice her until she came up to me.
“You look like Jim Morrison!” She shouted above the music. I was already drunk and being complemented by a pretty girl added to my euphoria. We started talking, she agreed with everything I said.
“I want to move to Los Angeles.”
“Me too!” She enthused.
“What you going to do there?” She asked.
“I don’t know, see what comes up.”
“Me too!” I couldn’t believe how much we had in common, she was infectious and I was enthralled. She was also lying about everything, but I didn’t notice until later when we had nothing in common. She was a neo-hippie chick who had never met a hippie, or a counter-cultural thought, break the skin and she was like the surrounding town, conservative. I knew from almost the beginning that it wouldn’t work out but she came along at a time in my life when I was feeling particularly vulnerable, and didn't want to be alone, I should have known better, but I consoled myself with a steady supply of sex until she discovered the truth. There are times of our lives when the answers to our problems seems to be to bury our flesh in that of others. And what happens when you make compromises? You end up compromising yourself.
As time went by I felt trapped with her at the trailer, like any good college town Madison has its own strip of bars. So, to avoid the realization of the inevitable, I'd taken to spending afternoons in the various bars, alongside the locals avoiding wives, girlfriends, and responsibilities. Whenever the phone rang someone invariably yelled across the room to the bartender,
"Hey, Sue, if it's my wife I'm not here." I was avoiding going back to my trailer, dreading one of those crushing relationship ambushes when the other person is there at an unexpected time, and you know you're in for one of those heavy talks about the relationship that you usually experience right before you break up. The death of our relationship was my ambition, and hers was to be married. It was beginning to look like any other relationship, I was beginning to look like any other resident. I was looking for a new world of thought and feeling.
(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal, please don't forget your mailing address!)
Chapter IV: The View From The Audience
I found the buying of bootleg concerts provided the same thrill as scoring dope. You had to know someone, who knew someone who was "dealing". Connections were loose, people tenuous. On the way to a "score" I'd look over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't being followed, and that no one suspected what I was up to, which may have lead people to suspect I was up to something much more illegal. And you had to be wary of new people. Were they trying to rip you off? Were they trying to sell you a commonplace concert that everyone has and they just added on some songs from another concert or cut a tape short? Were they "narcs" from the RIAA's police, or cool like you, just trying to score some stuff? And once you got your "stuff'' you ran off to the secrecy of your own pad to ingest the substance. In this case, listening to your contraband concert. A totally furtive lifestyle.
In a college town there's a new influx of excitement and adventure every fall, in the form of a new class, especially the girls. My brother and sister always teased me, asking if my girlfriends were at least eighteen, it was just that as I got older, my girlfriends didn't. Most of the girls thought I was a local and didn't fit their definition of success. They were unimpressed with my dreams, and they would soon be off to trendy careers and successful husbands anyway. They were interested in one thing, and it wasn't the one thing I was interested in. The girls I did interest ran from the neo-hippie chicks who loved to wear tie-dye and have sex, which they considered a form of rebellion, but as their graduation loomed and their rebellion came to an end, so did our relationships. Then there were the girls I always seemed to fall for, the girls with purple hair and problems. They were the wildest. But I was saving myself, not from sex, they were the type of girls that you could take to the bars and concerts, but I was looking for someone more in line with my ambitions. I started to see the passage of classes as the passing of seasons, one piling upon the other. First there were a few, then a handful, then more and more, until I became worried the passage of seasons was becoming too many.
I had just broken up with my last girlfriend, Deidre. We'd had an on again, off again relationship for about a year. Whenever we had a fight, or she was acting like she wanted something more from the relationship, I sent her home. She wasn't beautiful, but she wasn’t ugly either, and there was something latently sexual about her. She was twenty-one to my thirty, and I liked her because she wore low cut blouses, short skirts. I guess I wasn’t very good on waiting for all the rewards later, there were other benefits to be had, namely blow jobs, I knew the luxuries would come later. The ironic thing was she turned out to be a local, and not from the college. She was a Rock 'n' Roll chick through and through. She had a collection of black concert T-shirts from the 70's, which in some kind of relativistic universe should have made them antiques. The glass of her vanity mirror was almost obliterated by the ticket stubs of every concert she'd ever been to. She was not quite a groupie, and something more than a fan. It was like she lacked the imagination or perhaps the ambition to be a groupie, I knew almost from the start it wasn't going to work out. I met her at a party. I didn’t notice her until she came up to me.
“You look like Jim Morrison!” She shouted above the music. I was already drunk and being complemented by a pretty girl added to my euphoria. We started talking, she agreed with everything I said.
“I want to move to Los Angeles.”
“Me too!” She enthused.
“What you going to do there?” She asked.
“I don’t know, see what comes up.”
“Me too!” I couldn’t believe how much we had in common, she was infectious and I was enthralled. She was also lying about everything, but I didn’t notice until later when we had nothing in common. She was a neo-hippie chick who had never met a hippie, or a counter-cultural thought, break the skin and she was like the surrounding town, conservative. I knew from almost the beginning that it wouldn’t work out but she came along at a time in my life when I was feeling particularly vulnerable, and didn't want to be alone, I should have known better, but I consoled myself with a steady supply of sex until she discovered the truth. There are times of our lives when the answers to our problems seems to be to bury our flesh in that of others. And what happens when you make compromises? You end up compromising yourself.
As time went by I felt trapped with her at the trailer, like any good college town Madison has its own strip of bars. So, to avoid the realization of the inevitable, I'd taken to spending afternoons in the various bars, alongside the locals avoiding wives, girlfriends, and responsibilities. Whenever the phone rang someone invariably yelled across the room to the bartender,
"Hey, Sue, if it's my wife I'm not here." I was avoiding going back to my trailer, dreading one of those crushing relationship ambushes when the other person is there at an unexpected time, and you know you're in for one of those heavy talks about the relationship that you usually experience right before you break up. The death of our relationship was my ambition, and hers was to be married. It was beginning to look like any other relationship, I was beginning to look like any other resident. I was looking for a new world of thought and feeling.
(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal, please don't forget your mailing address!)
Chapter IV: The View From The Audience
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Is Everybody In?
I’m dead. Not the cold corporeal type of death, but a warm, living death, a ghost trying to regain what he has lost. A death where everything is a faded, pale facsimile of the life I had. I went into my study and sat at the desk, it’s an old theatrical make-up table with a gilded mirror surrounded by those old fashioned bulbous lights, naked, astringent, that push light into every crevice and nook, no where to hide. Every night I sit surrounded in this room, a shrine to my "career.” The desk is stuffed with my newspaper reviews, photographs, journals, scrapbooks and notes. The mirror was cleaned up and glimmered, a relic of an age gone by, salvage from my past.
I lit a candle and popped a tape into the player on the desk, I watched the candle flicker and dance, casting shadows against the wall, hoping it would set the mood. I cleared my mind and let the music transport me back, opening the flood of memories. It was a ceremony I've been practicing, a little ritual to help induce self-hypnosis. A voice from the speakers said, "ladies and gentlemen, from Madison, Wisconsin, The Unknown Soldiers!" I closed my eyes, and I could see the audience cheering, an impressionistic flash of colorful clothes, and faces looking up at, me. I had been the singer in a Doors tribute band, The Unknown Soldiers, it seemed like if I could concentrate hard enough and remember all the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings, I'd find myself on that stage again. The music was raw but powerful, then my voice came booming out of the speakers, it was huskier than Jim Morrison’s, but I was able to tear out screams as well as his. We sounded like what The Doors had on a night Morrison wasn’t too drunk. I remember those days like the touch of a lost lover, the sensation lingers. More salvage.
I liked playing Morrison, it made me feel powerful. Getting a reaction from the audience, and being able to move them to ecstasy, despair, or joy. I imagined it to be something of how Morrison had felt. People had given me things, presents, trinkets, beads like Morrison's, poems that they thought I'd be interested in, women gave themselves to me because of it. I later realized they were only trying to get close to me, so they could touch something of Morrison, a ghost of someone not even myself. It had also gotten me to Los Angeles and my chance at fame, I can still almost feel the “whoosh” of air as fame rushed by me. I opened my eyes to the usual disappointment, I was still in the here and now. No audience, no cheering, no applause.
Jim Morrison, was the charismatic and controversial lead singer of The Doors, the 60's rock group that had such hits as Light My Fire, Touch Me, and Riders On The Storm, but also songs like The End which at first glance was a paean to lost love, but in the end had a modern telling of the Oedipus myth, like many young men Morrison worried about death, every twenty year old feels like he’ll never live to thirty while simultaneously feeling immortal. Since I was a teenager people, friends had told me I looked like Jim Morrison. I hadn't really paid that much attention to Morrison, or his music, but I took the compliments to heart, it had boosted my ego to think I looked like someone famous, and that's how my life took its form.
I looked into the mirror. I had the idea that I could look into myself to find the questions of my life, and I hoped the answers lay within the formulation of those questions. But all I could see was my craggy face being torn by the toll of time that Morrison never had to endure, kind of like Dorian Gray without the luxury of a portrait.
My friends and I had missed the 60’s, on a geologic scale it was only a stones throw away, on a cultural scale it was ancient history, it was like looking back to the age of heros, and beholding past glories through the ambered memories of our older brothers and sisters. So we tried to recreate that time, our own Summer of Love, going out to the park and smoking dope, at the feet of our very own Dion, listening to him play James Taylor songs on an acoustic guitar.
I wanted to be a rock star, everybody wants to be a rock star! Including you! You become something more, something special, it’s like alchemy from lead to gold, the mortal to the immortal. Being a rock star is power, power over authority, power over women, power over the truths of reality, by definition, a hero!
And why not The Doors? The Doors had both mainstream success and a cult following since their inception. Rock 'n' Roll is a lifestyle, high volume, dress, attitude, rebellion against authority, and nobody embraced that better than Jim Morrison, he’s the model of a rock star to rock stars. And The Doors were a truly revolutionary group. The music was primal, and Morrison’s lyrics and his confrontation of his audience was a message of revolution, not storm the palace walls, but a subtle revolution, an exhortation to change from within, the revolution within yourself, and that’s what scared people, because real change is always from within.
But I wasn't a rock star, maybe a simulacrum of one, a modern Prometheus, ever changing, facile. I'd had a taste of what being a rock star was like. Probably a shadow of what it really was like, but I'd been closer than most. I saw the top of the mountain through the mists. Performing had been the best high I'd ever experienced. Better than any drug I'd ever tried. I'd had a taste of what most people can only fantasize of, only dream of, and will never experience, nor can they imagine what it feels like even as they sing along, play air guitar, or beat out a rhythm.
I looked at the blank page staring back at me from the desk. I've been trying to write my autobiography on and off for years since the band broke up. I have to write it while I can still hear the chorus of voices of those I met, those I befriended, those I loved, those I cheated. The band had been my idea I was the lead singer. I'd gone through a lot of things with the band most people wouldn't understand. As the lead singer, I was the focal point of the band. I'd experienced a lot of things even they couldn't understand, but they had never understood me, or what I was trying to do. But if I can get this one thing right, if I can put this together and make you understand, then maybe others will understand. The one thing Morrison taught me was to have some irreverence for art, to break through to the subconscious, maybe I should sit write ‘fuck‘ a hundred times.
My 'fame', my 'celebrity' were now things of memory. Things were different now that I was a chef, albeit in a "fancy" restaurant. Now I had to "take orders" from people, and conform to other expectations, such as wearing a uniform. I learned the trade by going to one of those six month schools you see advertised on TV at three in the morning, financing and student loans available, it was either this or gunsmithing. I spent a couple of years working as a prep cook doing most of the actual preparation while the chef heated up the food, put it on a plate, added a colorful garnish, and took all of the credit.
I haven't been to work on time in weeks. I try, but something always seems to get in the way. Tonight was typical, I was running late and as soon as I walked in the manager, Sergei, was on me. He caught me in the prep area I was trying to make it look like I'd been there a while. He came up to me, close, I could almost taste the decades of garlicky food on his breath.
"Hey rock star!" He yelled, his thickly accented voice reverberating harshly off the stainless steel, pots clanking on their hooks as he rushed passed. I had told all my coworkers of my past "celebrity", regaling them with my tales, on and off stage, so they'd know who they were working with, that I wasn't just some cook. "You're late again, Michael."
"I know, I'm sorry, it was...." A smile crossed my lips as I tried to find the right lie. I was beyond any pretense of caring if I could think of one or not. I was beyond caring whether or not I kept the job. My wife would be the only one to care, but only momentarily because she would understand, and support whatever decision I made. From the moment I met her she believed in me.
"I don't want an excuse, I've heard them all from you," Sergei said, looking me up and down with disgust, "and look at your shirt, it's starting to look dingy." Every night sweat stained the shirt a little more, and a little more dirt clung to it. It became just a little dingier, just like the work, "do me a favor, Desmond," he said moving even closer to me and pulling at the shirt, "wash it."
Then there were the customers and invariably the complainers, 'the soup was too hot', 'too cold', 'how is the fish prepared?', 'the steak is too well done' 'too rare', 'not done enough', and inevitably the less satisfied they were, the 'ruder' I became. Sergei couldn't fire me because I was too good a chef, and had a small local following asking for me whenever they came in. Finishing this book is the only way I can get back what's been taken away.
(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website(only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal, please don't forget your mailing address!)
Chapter 2: Rock 'n' Roll Dreams
I lit a candle and popped a tape into the player on the desk, I watched the candle flicker and dance, casting shadows against the wall, hoping it would set the mood. I cleared my mind and let the music transport me back, opening the flood of memories. It was a ceremony I've been practicing, a little ritual to help induce self-hypnosis. A voice from the speakers said, "ladies and gentlemen, from Madison, Wisconsin, The Unknown Soldiers!" I closed my eyes, and I could see the audience cheering, an impressionistic flash of colorful clothes, and faces looking up at, me. I had been the singer in a Doors tribute band, The Unknown Soldiers, it seemed like if I could concentrate hard enough and remember all the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings, I'd find myself on that stage again. The music was raw but powerful, then my voice came booming out of the speakers, it was huskier than Jim Morrison’s, but I was able to tear out screams as well as his. We sounded like what The Doors had on a night Morrison wasn’t too drunk. I remember those days like the touch of a lost lover, the sensation lingers. More salvage.
I liked playing Morrison, it made me feel powerful. Getting a reaction from the audience, and being able to move them to ecstasy, despair, or joy. I imagined it to be something of how Morrison had felt. People had given me things, presents, trinkets, beads like Morrison's, poems that they thought I'd be interested in, women gave themselves to me because of it. I later realized they were only trying to get close to me, so they could touch something of Morrison, a ghost of someone not even myself. It had also gotten me to Los Angeles and my chance at fame, I can still almost feel the “whoosh” of air as fame rushed by me. I opened my eyes to the usual disappointment, I was still in the here and now. No audience, no cheering, no applause.
Jim Morrison, was the charismatic and controversial lead singer of The Doors, the 60's rock group that had such hits as Light My Fire, Touch Me, and Riders On The Storm, but also songs like The End which at first glance was a paean to lost love, but in the end had a modern telling of the Oedipus myth, like many young men Morrison worried about death, every twenty year old feels like he’ll never live to thirty while simultaneously feeling immortal. Since I was a teenager people, friends had told me I looked like Jim Morrison. I hadn't really paid that much attention to Morrison, or his music, but I took the compliments to heart, it had boosted my ego to think I looked like someone famous, and that's how my life took its form.
I looked into the mirror. I had the idea that I could look into myself to find the questions of my life, and I hoped the answers lay within the formulation of those questions. But all I could see was my craggy face being torn by the toll of time that Morrison never had to endure, kind of like Dorian Gray without the luxury of a portrait.
My friends and I had missed the 60’s, on a geologic scale it was only a stones throw away, on a cultural scale it was ancient history, it was like looking back to the age of heros, and beholding past glories through the ambered memories of our older brothers and sisters. So we tried to recreate that time, our own Summer of Love, going out to the park and smoking dope, at the feet of our very own Dion, listening to him play James Taylor songs on an acoustic guitar.
I wanted to be a rock star, everybody wants to be a rock star! Including you! You become something more, something special, it’s like alchemy from lead to gold, the mortal to the immortal. Being a rock star is power, power over authority, power over women, power over the truths of reality, by definition, a hero!
And why not The Doors? The Doors had both mainstream success and a cult following since their inception. Rock 'n' Roll is a lifestyle, high volume, dress, attitude, rebellion against authority, and nobody embraced that better than Jim Morrison, he’s the model of a rock star to rock stars. And The Doors were a truly revolutionary group. The music was primal, and Morrison’s lyrics and his confrontation of his audience was a message of revolution, not storm the palace walls, but a subtle revolution, an exhortation to change from within, the revolution within yourself, and that’s what scared people, because real change is always from within.
But I wasn't a rock star, maybe a simulacrum of one, a modern Prometheus, ever changing, facile. I'd had a taste of what being a rock star was like. Probably a shadow of what it really was like, but I'd been closer than most. I saw the top of the mountain through the mists. Performing had been the best high I'd ever experienced. Better than any drug I'd ever tried. I'd had a taste of what most people can only fantasize of, only dream of, and will never experience, nor can they imagine what it feels like even as they sing along, play air guitar, or beat out a rhythm.
I looked at the blank page staring back at me from the desk. I've been trying to write my autobiography on and off for years since the band broke up. I have to write it while I can still hear the chorus of voices of those I met, those I befriended, those I loved, those I cheated. The band had been my idea I was the lead singer. I'd gone through a lot of things with the band most people wouldn't understand. As the lead singer, I was the focal point of the band. I'd experienced a lot of things even they couldn't understand, but they had never understood me, or what I was trying to do. But if I can get this one thing right, if I can put this together and make you understand, then maybe others will understand. The one thing Morrison taught me was to have some irreverence for art, to break through to the subconscious, maybe I should sit write ‘fuck‘ a hundred times.
My 'fame', my 'celebrity' were now things of memory. Things were different now that I was a chef, albeit in a "fancy" restaurant. Now I had to "take orders" from people, and conform to other expectations, such as wearing a uniform. I learned the trade by going to one of those six month schools you see advertised on TV at three in the morning, financing and student loans available, it was either this or gunsmithing. I spent a couple of years working as a prep cook doing most of the actual preparation while the chef heated up the food, put it on a plate, added a colorful garnish, and took all of the credit.
I haven't been to work on time in weeks. I try, but something always seems to get in the way. Tonight was typical, I was running late and as soon as I walked in the manager, Sergei, was on me. He caught me in the prep area I was trying to make it look like I'd been there a while. He came up to me, close, I could almost taste the decades of garlicky food on his breath.
"Hey rock star!" He yelled, his thickly accented voice reverberating harshly off the stainless steel, pots clanking on their hooks as he rushed passed. I had told all my coworkers of my past "celebrity", regaling them with my tales, on and off stage, so they'd know who they were working with, that I wasn't just some cook. "You're late again, Michael."
"I know, I'm sorry, it was...." A smile crossed my lips as I tried to find the right lie. I was beyond any pretense of caring if I could think of one or not. I was beyond caring whether or not I kept the job. My wife would be the only one to care, but only momentarily because she would understand, and support whatever decision I made. From the moment I met her she believed in me.
"I don't want an excuse, I've heard them all from you," Sergei said, looking me up and down with disgust, "and look at your shirt, it's starting to look dingy." Every night sweat stained the shirt a little more, and a little more dirt clung to it. It became just a little dingier, just like the work, "do me a favor, Desmond," he said moving even closer to me and pulling at the shirt, "wash it."
Then there were the customers and invariably the complainers, 'the soup was too hot', 'too cold', 'how is the fish prepared?', 'the steak is too well done' 'too rare', 'not done enough', and inevitably the less satisfied they were, the 'ruder' I became. Sergei couldn't fire me because I was too good a chef, and had a small local following asking for me whenever they came in. Finishing this book is the only way I can get back what's been taken away.
(The Last Stage is available on Kindle, Nook Books, or if you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website(only $20!) at Jymsbooks via Paypal, please don't forget your mailing address!)
Chapter 2: Rock 'n' Roll Dreams
Introduction: The Last Stage
Writers want to be read. Readers want to read good books and discover new writers. It’s a leap of faith to ask readers to invest in an unknown writer and ask readers to buy a book, sight unseen. Reviews and word of mouth help to alleviate these concerns but they aren’t infallible. To get readers acquainted with my work, especially The Last Stage, I’ve serialized it here on this site.
The Last Stage is the story of Michael Desmond, a professional student who feels a sense of destiny in his life, but doesn’t know how to act on it. Throughout his life Michael’s friends have commented upon his resemblance to Doors lead singer Jim Morrison. Michael decides his road to fame is by starting a Doors tribute band. The Last Stage follows Michael and the band as they travel their roads to success and Michael’s Last Stage.
I write The Doors Examiner I've also written the foreword to The Doors FAQ, and articles for Rants, Raves and Rock 'n' Roll Magazine.
The Last Stage is available on Kindle Nook Books . If you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!)at Jymsbooks via Paypal, please don't forget your mailing address!
I hope you enjoy The Last Stage!
Chapter I: Is Everybody In?
The Last Stage is the story of Michael Desmond, a professional student who feels a sense of destiny in his life, but doesn’t know how to act on it. Throughout his life Michael’s friends have commented upon his resemblance to Doors lead singer Jim Morrison. Michael decides his road to fame is by starting a Doors tribute band. The Last Stage follows Michael and the band as they travel their roads to success and Michael’s Last Stage.
I write The Doors Examiner I've also written the foreword to The Doors FAQ, and articles for Rants, Raves and Rock 'n' Roll Magazine.
The Last Stage is available on Kindle Nook Books . If you would like a signed copy of The Last Stage they're available from my website (only $20!)at Jymsbooks via Paypal, please don't forget your mailing address!
I hope you enjoy The Last Stage!
Chapter I: Is Everybody In?
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