Looking back, I should have written more often in waltz time. Kindness seems more important in life's rearview mirror. I wish I had walked away from bad situations sooner.
Sometimes I think that maybe I should have worried less about the future. After all, here it is, and it is what it is. I suppose that I would have just wasted more time worrying about the past. These days I have a whole lot more past than future and I don't worry much about either one.
The winners, they write the history. Einstein reportedly wrote, "Everybody is a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing that it is stupid." The quote has never been verified, by the way.
My grandmother often quipped, "If a bullfrog had wings he wouldn't bump his butt so much." I can personally vouch for that one. I probably put her on an intellectual level with him. Einstein, that is, not the bullfrog.
In his great conceit, man has put himself at the top of some arbitrary pyramid of the higher animals. Now the first cut-off separates the vertebrates from fish and invertebrates. Then the bickering really starts to roll until we all agree on the tippy top.
We're Number One! We're Number One!
Says who?
Dogs sniff butts. Humans check social status and bank accounts.
I'm not advocating butt sniffing, here, although it seems that it might just be as valid as the other. When it comes right down to it, it's all about love and fear. Put me down for love and, if you can't seat me at the dog table, let me sit at the kids' table.
Give us peace on earth and end this dreadful, dreadful war. Grandma said that, too.
There really is nothing much to be taken seriously when you get right down to it. I've always managed to worry about loss in the future and then, whatta' ya know, loss. I never enjoyed a carnival properly. I spent my time worrying about the end. I usually ended up with tickets left over due to judicious planning. I have t shirts and Levis that are from another century. Never wore my favorites often so that I wouldn't wear them out. Now gravity and age and beer have colluded to see that I'll never wear them out.
Maybe I've hoarded too much of my love, worrying that romance would end, that someone would leave. I don't have to write this next line for you, do I?
Now? Now I just love. At least I try. I hope that someone loves me but I don't count on it. I will say that I am thrilled to death when anyone tells me that they love me. I don't analyze it. It's not likely that somebody else's idea and definition of love will match mine. I'll take all that I can get.
Once there were lightning bugs, fireflies. I remember coquinas by the millions and stars that lit a purple-black sky. Now, when I hear a mockingbird's song, I'm reminded that I don't hear them very much these days.
Terrorist. I remember when I first encountered the term. My friend, Larry Rardon, came home from a European vacation and excitedly told me that he actually saw the man whose face he had seen on a wanted poster in Germany. A terrorist. Today I assume that terrorists live in my town. Yours, too.
Cell phones? Yeah, we all remember those gigantic, walkie-talkie things that realtors and jackasses in suspenders showed off at happy hour. Now every sixteen year old behind the wheel of the BMW coming at you in your lane is swiping and texting and posting.
There is probably no need for me to go on with my grumbling. You get my point. Is Andrew Hardin right? Am I a curmudgeon?
I don't long for what was. I grieve for what could have been.
My role, if, in fact, I have a role, is to help folks feel. Oh, believe me- I know how smug that reads. I'm an acquired taste. A cult artist. A journeyman musician. Even those job descriptions sound pretentious. Precious.
Somehow I was destined to be one of those country preachers who ends up called by the message, not the moolah. We're a rare breed these days. Interview friends and promise them confidentiality and the term "annoying" may come up.
My message, if, in fact, I have a message, is something vague about peace and love and rock'n'roll. I've been fashionable from time to time with my undertaking. Not so much for the most part. I'm never sure, but I think I may be happier when I'm not. I can't be certain that it's not just rationalization. I would rather think of it in terms of my support for the underdog.
"Are you a hippie?" I remember Mike Regar asking me in 1965.
I don't remember how I answered but I think I was. I think I am.
Man, oh man- it just all goes by so quickly, doesn't it? Something has recently opened the floodgates of my memory and the old stories are lined up like jets on the tarmac at Hartsfield- Jackson. Good ones and bad ones. Maybe it's just a byproduct of New Year.
As a kid, I had no idea that the same bunch of geniuses were playing on all of my favorite records. I mean they were on different labels- Specialty, Aladdin, Imperial, Atco, Chess, Argo. I had never heard the term, studio musician. I'm not really sure that the term had been coined.
Over a couple of decades I began to recognize something about drum fills. That just had to be the same guy on the Little Richard record who was playing on Fats' new hit. Don't try to tell me that the guy playing tenor on that Clarence "Frogman" Henry side isn't the same one on the Lloyd Price song!
In 1977 I arrived in New Orleans for the first time. I was there to see the King Tut exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
While the bellboy was waiting with his hand out, I was flipping through the phone book from the bedside cabinet. With no order in mind, I flipped through the pages.
Right there in the goldarned phonebook- gods! All the gods. Of course I didn't call any of them. What would I say?
Funny thing is that the first one who gave me the clue, Earl Palmer, wasn't in there. He had packed his drums and his bags and headed for Los Angeles in 1957. He had continued to play on my favorite records. Sam Cooke. Eddie Cochran. Larry Williams. Ritchie Valens. Bobby Day. The Beach Boys. The Righteous Brothers.
I've never been to LA. I'll betcha' ol' Earl was never in the phone book.
