These days are becoming a little too sad for me. Everybody seems to hate somebody. Most folks manage to fit in, somewhere, all their lives. I've only been aware of my outsider status from time to time, usually when it's been pointed out to me.
When I write and blather about love as a commodity, I'm aware of how juvenile and naive I sound. If I cared I'd quit. If it paid well I'd be rich. I've not loved well but I've loved hard.
They're really rocking' in Mayberry, down at Highgrove House...
Now, Charlene Darling, there was a beauty. I know, I know- she was a fictional character. Aren't we all? I never knew whether to feel sorry for Ernest T. Bass or to celebrate his joy. Downhill romance with no brakes and the steering out is life with all nerve endings exposed. I feel sorry for the ones who never know the ride. Most folks, alas, never will.
After the hoopla, poor Charles was stuck with his beautiful bipolar princess, a fortune that would choke the queen's favorite horse, two perfect children and a job with good hours and a proper health plan. As we all came to know through the British tabloids, all he wanted was to be Camilla's tampon.
Be careful what you wish for.
Me? I wish I could quit ending sentences with prepositions.
Problem is both sides generally believe that. There are no good wars. Never have been. Never will be. There are wars that are good for Raytheon. Halliburton. GE. Northrop Grumman. President Eisenhower warned us in 1961 of, what he called, the military industrial complex- the armed forces combined with defense contractors.
This sounds disrespectful and I suppose that it is. Nobody wants to go to a military academy and spend their working life with no war.
Woody Guthrie famously wrote:
"I took a bath this morning in six war speeches and a sprinkle of peace. Looks like everybody is declaring war against the forces of force. That's what you get for building up a big war machine. It scares your neighbors into jumping on you and then, of course, they themselves have to use force, so you are against their force and they're against yours. Looks like the ring has been dragged and the marbles are all in. The millionaires has throwed their silk hats and our last set of drawers in the ring. The fuse is lit and the cannon is set and somebody is in for a frailin. I would like to see every single soldier on every single side, just take off your helmet, unbuckle your kit, lay down your rifle, and set down at the side of some shady lane, and say, nope, I ain't gonna kill nobody. Plenty of rich folks wants to fight. Give them the guns."
If we ever give up the dream of peace and love, we abandon our birthright.
Maybe I'm naive. I've been called worse. Beware of anybody peddling anything that can't be bought with love.
Obsession with my obsession is becoming my obsession. You're welcome to call it madness. I would like to blame it on someone else but, truth be told, she has done nothing to encourage it.
My pal, Ed Brown, always said, "Youth has never failed to go to the dogs."
I don't really know what that means. He said a lot. I don't know what most of it meant. Everybody needs a hillbilly guru.
Maybe regrets are just duct tape for the soul. Lately I seem to be dealing mostly in the realm of "if only." My relative resistance to the compounding evil in the homeland seems to have collapsed today.
Maybe it's nothing but a signal to write.
"Why do you write such dark songs, sad songs?"
That German music writer was the first person to ask. Write what you know, pal. Write what you know.
Rimbaud claimed that you have to be born a poet. He suffered, in his own words, to become a seer. By the age of twenty one he was done. He never wrote again.
By the time I was twenty one I had quit several times. I've given it up hundreds of times by now. There comes a point where you can't quit, where quitting is harder than hanging on.
Pay day is seeing the dawn before the sun comes up. Last night I was riding with Nikola Tesla and Arthur, himself. Nick was throwing fire from his hands and Rimbaud was carving curses in his arm with rose thorns. I was drinking rum from a Dixie cup. Do they still make Dixie cups?
Tesla called it energy. Rimbaud referred to it as love.
Writers, real writers, use words as weapons. Tools. Sometimes they rhyme. They move you. They change you. Scientists comfort you. They explain the world and help you find your place in it. They show you your insignificance and they tuck you in.
I'm no more a writer than I am a musician. I'm just an antennae for all the poets and scientists. The gods who don't have their own station.
