Lord Buckley said it all before I got around to it and he said it better. Why struggle? I have my valentine. No need to tell her. It would only complicate matters. Oh, for my commune.
"Love must be shown at every moment!
LSD tells me never to save up what I need to spend in my old age
-spend your love now for I may not have the chance later on, dig?
My unspent love draws no interest. Like an unused muscle, it goes slack.
If LSD taught me one thing it taught me the immediate necessity of exercising the love muscle.
Not tomorrow but now. Since this moment is now let me just say,
to whoever's pretty eyes or ears pass over these words
...I love you very much."
Out of the more or less clear blue I find myself this morning doubting the relevance of rock'n'roll in my life. Talk about your slow learners!
Oh, it's not the first time that I've questioned it. This time, though, it's not the byproduct of some financial crisis. It has nothing to do with some failed romance or any dealings with self-important suits who couldn't sell culture.
No, this is all about self delusion. The music? No regrets on this end. I've known myself, if only a bit, and I've communicated with folks that I would never have known.
It's the business, the fashion, the facade.
Of course I would love to believe that I would have done exactly as I have without Elvis. Nope. Without Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. No way. The Beatles. Ha!
Let me put this in a better perspective. I'm glad I didn't cheat anyone to make my way. I feel fortunate to have been given a moral code from the women who raised me to keep me on a crooked but narrow path for all these years. I'm grateful, in hindsight, that the girls never threw themselves at my feet.
Maybe I wanted the money. Maybe I coveted the fame. The interest in the women was always with me.
Somehow though, the fact that I've zigged when zagging was all the rage reveals everything that you need to know about this so-called career. I'm naive, not dumb. Not too dumb.
It's all about the love. The rock'n'roll is just to ease the pain.
Listen. Do you hear it? The message of the original language, the divine rhythm, has been put before me for as long as I can remember. It's in the thunder, the crashing of the waves. You can hear it from any seashell. It was hidden in plain sight in Jack and Jill Magazine when I was six. It snaked from Earl Palmer's hands when I was nine. Now Alan Watts reminds me from beyond the grave. The birds and the bears have always spoken to me and sometimes I listened. There were stretches, of course, when the nineteen year old Brigitte Bardot interrupted the flow. Still does.
No more writing about love, I'm loving. While I'm at it, I'm dancing. Singing. I have tuned it in and I've torn the knob off the receiver.
Drugs, alcohol, heartbreak- lots of heartbreak. I've used all the tools at my disposal to disassociate with "reality." All the art that matters is in the ether. Not every mystic is an artist but any mystic could be an artist.
Pure love is the highest art. It may not win a Grammy, an oscar. It may never hang in the louvre but you know it when you come across it.
Seems like I've sat through sermons longer than this life. My pal, Ed Brown, always said that youth had no concept of mortality. Of course he also claimed that youth never fails to go to the dogs. Turns out that all those platitudes that geezers spread are true. Well, most of them. Mostly true.
I've got jeans that I hope to wear out before I go. Hell of a bucket list, huh?
Over time my fortunes have risen and tumbled. For a short time my net worth was impressive. I've spent more time broke. Frequently flat broke. I've never accumulated much debt. My mom taught me to balance a checkbook.
When it comes to material goods I've owned pretty much everything that I could have ever dreamed of. Some of it I wish I had back. So that I could sell it again.
The only things that I truly miss are the loved ones who have gone, human and otherwise. That's not a source of despair. Most of the joy in my heart comes from the memories that they left me.
Now the household is the three of us: Jamaica, a maniacal, lovable mutt, ten years old; Angel, a balding black cat headed for seventeen and displaying some charming signs of senility; and me, a delusional hillbilly looking at a sixty ninth birthday with almost no signs of stability of any kind.
As I watch these folks on the nightly news speculate on what they will do with their nine hundred million dollar payoff from Powerball I realize that I'm one of the richest men who ever lived. Everything is mine. Oh, I'm happy when I get new "stuff." Truth is, though, I can't think of anything that I want.
All my life I've been spoiled with love. I wish that for everyone. Share your love. Forgive. Dance and sing.
Why would it fall on a heathen like me to remind folks of what Jesus had to say? Remember the "suffer the little children" passage? We've got children starving on every continent and we're reminded every few minutes on cable news. He had plenty to say about rich and poor, too. While I'm at it, let me remind you again that he was called the Prince Of Peace.
Generally there comes something of a "golden age," a spiritual awakening, following major wars. Now our governments, working hand in hand with a military industrial complex, have created perpetual war, war without end.
Meanwhile, we fret about some punks occupying land in Oregon. Volkswagen cheating. The Super Bowl.
I'm not a particularly bright guy but the emperor's naked as a jaybird. Your move.
