Careya

A brief visit to Jeff Buckleys place of passing along the Wolf River in Memphis Tennessee.

-

The trail was a simple running path that led from a wooded welcome center decorated in BB king and Elvis murals and out onto an open plateau. There were a few benches and a big Sycamore tree above a grass lawn that fell steeply down into old cobblestones tapering out of sight under the murky waters of the Wolf River. Small silver waves lapped at the shore in a rather lovely hum and the wind was a steady breath against the black eyed Susan. A large dinner boat six stories tall and in the style of the 1920s sat across the canal, polished white with checkered awnings. An amphitheater sat directly behind the boat, strange but fitting I thought and I imagined I might like to play that stage one day to look out across this stretch of water and onto the cobblestone shore where my hero fell.

I was alone, sitting on an off cut of stone. It was truly a beautiful place. I could understand the urge to be here and even to swim if the day was hot enough. I spoke aloud to Jeff and told him of all those who carry on his tune. So many of us affected and determined to live and breathe his grace, his joy, his kindness, and his power. I played his version of mama you’ve been on my mind and the music fit like a glove in the silence between the waves and the wind and the rare hoot and holler of the ship workers across the canal.

I had brought a dried bouquet of flowers, they’d traveled with me for some time now. From New York to California and back across the Mississippi at least once. They had matured into a beautiful maroon and dark velvet bundle and with the addition of a few black eyed Susan’s, they cut quite the figure. I wedged them between a rusted metal circle atop an old piece of steel used to tie off the ships way back when. I tossed a few pieces of my hair into their foliage and watched them dance against the silver white caps that broke just before their feet. It was a splendid sight and especially there surrounded by broken beer bottles and the guts of the Mississippi, it felt like anyone who came looking for Jeff would recognize him in the lone bouquet and like a beacon be drawn to sit besides it and listen to the water whisper. On my way out I relieved a stone and a few flowers for souvenirs and strode back up the grassy hill, my back turned to where jeff Buckley last stood as a living man upon this earth. My father like Jeff’s, and also named Tim, waited for me on a bench under the sycamore tree and seemed as soothed as I was by the beauty of this particular patch of Memphis.

I do feel tried though and the fog lasts after a good nights rest. The poet on the commons sitting under his umbrella in the rain gave me awful feeling. We were quite akin, both well read and well traveled, at least as warriors of the white lines in this here U S of A. He knew Big Sur and the Henry miller library, he knew the sage fields and pueblos of Toas. I’m sure if I had asked he would have nodded his short stubbled chin in agreement at the mention of slab city or steamboat springs. He had kind eyes and I really mean him and that feathered cap he wore no harm, but he made me feel awfully sad sitting there alone writing his poems on a rusted type writer for a few bucks a pop. It felt like I was staring into a mirror. I wonder if he feels as rundown as I do, I wonder if he feels as desperate as I for consolation and recognition. God I hate the words coming out of my mouth right now but it’s true. It’s do or die these days and yet my mind is a cesspool that won’t sit still, I’m caught in all the webs I detest. Everyday I feel like I am polluting my only real assets by slipping into the lives of those more flush than I, or if not them simply the absence of eyes and minds and fingers upon my “output” or at least the output I share in a frantic fashion online. I never show my real treasures anymore. Not even to those closest to me. I hoard them in secrecy and they nourish me, I fear they would fall flat like the rest if I brought them online without a plan. It’s all a sick trap and I see that. Galilea gets on me all the time for it, for keeping myself hidden and then growing upset when I remain unseen. I guess I haven’t quite cracked the code of how to create in the soft splendor that overcomes us at our writing tables from time to time, the lines rush out clear and cold against the page, the melody fits, the guitar too, the whole damn equation adds up. Jubilation, my fervor restored and proved to be a great gift and not just some madhouse dream of a child raised by kind parents. A song stands tall before me and yet alone I am not satisfied. I want to share it with those who might understand it. I have seen it happen before my very eyes and I am now bound to walk this earth in search of that very feeling and those very souls who took a creation of mine into their solace and dropped the needle which rose my voice. Together we were alone for a few minutes. Such a beautiful exchange and a gift it is to hear the stories relayed after shows or in a morning letter from across the sea.

He was serving me in a Chitown bar, his hair was cut short like when he was younger, during his Sin-E days.

I knew he was dead and he smiled a slick smile when I brought up the point. He smiled as if he was quite aware of that fact and quite pleased with himself for pulling off this trick.

He was wearing a black hoodie and mixed my drink casually. Everyone’s mood at the bar seemed lifted for his being there, back amongst the living. We chatted and I can’t remember about what but when the conversation turned to music I asked if he would play a song and he agreed easily. He beckoned for me to follow and left from behind the bar, he strutted out onto the street and into another bar one door down. He walked up to an amp and fired it on, nothing fancy, quite the opposite, a real beater. He plugged in a black electric guitar and the room which had been in chatter and commotion all silenced and everyone uprooted themselves, forming a semi circle around Jeff. He played Lover you should’ve come over. He sang it beautifully and I wept, more so because he was supposed to be dead and yet here I was listening to him, real as the day is long, I knew somewhere in my mind I was dreaming but that didn’t matter for he was certainly real and certainly paying a visit to my mind. He at one point during the song began explaining in a joking fashion the chord progression, it was a little bit of his and he kept looking at me asking if I was getting it. God I was so overcome with joy to be in that room, 30 of us, maybe less, all grateful, all quiet and listening. When he finished I wanted to ask him to play “Just like a women” but I decided against it.

I don’t remember what happened next but I believe we spoke more and took a walk under the late summer sun. It was a wonderful dream and the tears I think were real too for I woke with a heavy heart but such a glad feeling.

an old home demo recorded with the shruti box into band lab. It was my first and one of only a few times i have “produced” my music alone and away from a bigger studio. There is a certain quality in the naive and almost sloppy completion of it that i find beautiful and completely my own. 

-

Oh and if only i might be of some comfort to you,

what else should i wish to do?

When i have nothing now but time

and this restless, wishing, willing, splitting mind.

And You, well you are something whole

something bound and full

sewn from only cloths of all the finest kind.

Like weathered clay the world around you holds

quiet as you go, carful but to show only the brightest days,

sweet thoughts of youth, and easy praise,

a well kept path of steady change

Last night, my first back east, was spent in a fierce lightning storm that had me barring my doors and cowering in suspicion away from the blackened windows, drummed upon by heavy rain. The sky was marvelous when struck in purple flame—a ribbon of electricity, the world briefly illuminated, the rain suspended—as a low crack stretched and broke across the valley like a kettle drum amongst the orchestra of night. I was certainly far away from California now, from the easy days I occupy there in abundance of man-made luxuries.

The movie theaters and countless cafés, all offering the same goods repackaged. Street tacos and clothing stores, Arenas and concert halls, band rehearsals, and trips to San Diego, where more cafés and more clothing stores wait… complete excess that, after such a long winter, I thoroughly enjoy.

My community there, alive in faces much missed, hours to spend, hours to burn with these rare sort of troubadours and wanderers. My lover, of course, and her house filled in the melodies of Silvio Rodriguez and Mercedes Sosa. In her company, all my questions quiet; I would be foolish to wish for more when holding such a treasure.

There in that city, with those people and that music, my youth and my age feel justified and correct. I feel young, like I’ve just remembered it anew; I rejoice and wonder how I ever came to feel so old.

Now back east, on the threshold of spring, the cherry blossoms and magnolias are open in breathtaking patches of violet and magenta, the green buds filling in the grey of ten thousand trees, the black-legged ticks returned in terrible numbers, the songbirds and peepers demanding to be heard, my fire unlit, a single blanket offering pleasant sleep all through the night. It is impossible to be blind to this change of season; it storms every sense, and the music, on its own accord, seems to return to Dylan, Van Ronk, and Furry Lewis. The blues suit this land, and who am I to deny the music its craving?

WHERE AM I IN MY LIFE?

At the helm, in a charge, further than I’ve ever been, and faced by the infinite.

Or maybe the center? The world spinning, visiting me from all sides, changing me from all sides.

Maybe I am motionless, maybe I am carried.

I do not honestly know. But I do wish to repossess, to rekindle, and to nourish once again that feeling of destiny that has always sat with me, ran with me, covered me, and calmed me. In the commotion of voices that Los Angeles possessed, and then in the quietness of my existence here in books and practice, my mind has stopped hearing destiny as clearly as it once did.

Now I am full of Patti and Emerson, of Jeff and Dylan—full of their pleas for integrity, their demands to create something worthy and lasting, full of their misunderstandings and their own confused, wonderful lives.

And too, I am full (much less pleasantly) of Eddie and the record labels, of the masses and collective. Their voices insist I am nothing without being known, without public appearances and sacrifice of my precious self. But what of me? What do I wish for?

I used to follow that answer so skillfully, without thought—a true master.

March 4th

The moon is full and the night pleasant at last. The air is warm enough where to breathe it in is not damming but again refreshing.

Gali summons the organ to life, pressing down the harpsichord and banjo keys, a melody mutter’s mimicking almost Amalthea becoming a woman.

Shimmer shine shhh the room listens,

the moon listens, and the wood stove alone rises up in its own song… pop put crack crack goes Calsifer as the hickory trim is turned to heat and my lover and I are warmed.

A bed lyes unmade and happy against the always creaking floor.

Spring hastens and the moon has risen out of sight, god I am lucky. Beauty at all sides, beauty storming my senses.

Creation waits for my return, I let her wait.

I am desperate to see, the sea, that is truly all I am missing at this moment. The sound of its eternal breath as it vanishes coastlines with inhales and exhales.

Beyond that precious deity I have all I could need right before me….

The warm flickering light like molasses maple sap siphoned and certain. The pleasant promise of the house organ played by the girl in a red scarf and wool coat,

she draws my mind to images of Paris

It’s crowded cafes containing cracked fingers cradling cappuccino cardamom camel cigarettes and quick wits.

The rain flowing down slanted streets of cobble, delivering the city back to its youth and splendor again and again.

She’s never even been to Paris but she sure looks the part.

I have too, the quiet comfort of family just down the road, larger than life, awake, eager, sensitive, and strong.

I have seen you behind bars restless and rambling, ruffling a deck of cards as you talk of all the places you will go.

I have seen you in our living room, yet a thousand miles away behind those eyes, haunted, miserable, and scared.  

I have seen you in rage too many times to count

My mother a punching bag, my mother a screaming figure condemning you to the night

I have seen you a coward looking down to me, trying to meet my stare

Just a boy I was and you a man with a hand slackening around my mother’s throat, meeting my demands.

I have seen you a zombie, a vegetable with blood full of poison, a clenched jaw, drenched in sweat, rotting at the hands of a high.

I have seen you gifted in miracles 

Drunken joyrides leaving the innocent and yourself untouched, the state troopers on strike. 

I have seen you in an apron, Jerry’s tenor filling the house - “We can share the women, we can share the wine” - The aroma of a craw fish boil conjuring up visions of your beginnings. 

I have seen you generous, buying an entire bar drinks. Countless Gifts of excess including my life in Colorado or the easy toss of 50 twenties on a birthday. 

I have seen you mesmerized at the helm of a ship in the Keys, an endless sea before you, the spray of whales and white caps. What that freedom must have felt like after the years away…

I have seen you gentle. Gentle with the same wicked hands that bring ruin and purple bruises.  Curled up with the dogs whose love for you softens me.

And just last month I saw an old woman, almost a decade past the worst of it. She stacked a pile of wood and claimed to be a counselor of yours back when you first came to town. 

“A hard life that one, give him a hug for me if you see him” she said.

I have hated you, I have adored you 

And I have now had time to reconstruct some notion of your impact…

you gave me a sister, You gave me a song bird, and my only one.

There is nothing here to hold onto, and there never will be.

Yet slowly, then all at once, immediacy gets replaced by experience…

Your calluses harden, your phrasing becomes your own.

You can take the punches now, but something was lost along the way…. Or maybe the world has just up and changed.

See it in Richie’s face, his claw keeping time in a bar room on Mardi Gras night. His eyes close and his head hangs. His hand meets the banjo as it has a hundred thousand times before, and sweet melodies are thrown from it.

Without sight or word, he leads the fiddle and upright bass that follow. He is a master and has a lifetime of diligent, broken, splendid, drunk, and festive nights before him to justify the title.

But still his eyes break occasionally from their sunken smile into that nervous frenzy that grips all of us who take on creation as a lover.

Something cold floods his bloodstream, memories storm his mind, every choice taken and not is brought to him with no clear reason or request.

It terrifies him just as it terrifies you and I.

Of course, we have all learned how to quell those nasty moments that summon the power of every doubt and cruel voice that we keep.

Every stage unplayed, crowd unwon, friend born greater, and voice more beautiful. The women who left and whom we did not follow, the town we loved which we still gave up.

The opportunity we met with a stutter, which quickly receded into a thin vapor no longer ours. The pains we caused in voices of arrogance and entitlement.

The silence that sits after our hands lift from the instrument. The room is empty. No one calls, you told them to leave you be.

It’s strange how it all comes back and then vanishes again. The heart is such a delicate thing, and to dream is such a courageous act in light of its consequences.

Yet we are nothing without art, without the great ballads and symphonies, the poets and painters of our short existence. Every decade is filled with us, and this will never change. You will see us in the local bars or before the red velvet seats of some quiet theater. You will see us in wide windowed galleries and hidden East Village basements.

You will see us in beautiful homes of every size as well as on the street, using an overpass as our canvas as well as our lodging.

And despite the thoughts that will always return… we are all, in fact, worthy and equal in this pursuit.

We all play a part in bringing song and decoration to the world and the rest who need so badly something to ease the mind.

Eager tender and true 

Not a second of thirty days misused 

Bless the beginning when two minds are splitting 

every word, touch, and glance here is new. 

You were afraid though weren’t you?

Shedding your mind of years

before meeting my eye. 

kept us all night 

in the shakes and the fright 

until we would decide 

we had said all we’d like 

and I’d pull you upon me to sleep 

And God how I was afraid too, 

Standing naked and laughing 

Undoing my past 

I’ve never felt joy quite like that. 

Then id wash your hair as it 

soaked through to black 

In the heart of the corn husking flats 

Yes theres a world outside this room 

That holds our lives, our gifts, and doubts 

but at least right here right now it seems 

The least we care about

So might we just stay here awhile?

And find out what it means to be loved 

Tomorrow can hold all the rest 

Oh Bless the beginning of us 

Yes bless the beginning of us 

Might I stir old thoughts in you?

Like the 400 miles you slept on my lap

Through Wyoming dead to the Platte. 

Long stretches of time to be young to be kind 

Always east, never mind what we’ve left behind 

My eyes fell to you, never back. 

Now from the world outside that room 

I speak of life, my gifts, and doubts  

Now and then I find myself in need of rest

in all we held

Might I just stay here awhile 

To remember what it means to be loved 

Tomorrow can have me again 

But for right now 

Bless the beginning of us 

bless the beginning of us 

Early in the morning, the newborn snow dressed the mountainside until the first great gusts of wind currents lifted the white powder into a spiraling, slow-motion dance that revealed the dark green pine boughs below. The clouds, too, were swept with a steady speed east, and the low sun snuck golden glances through small blue-sky pockets beyond the cloud wall. In even rarer moments, the light would last long enough to illuminate the entire valley; if a gust of wind came in unison with this brief revelation of spectacular light, one might see golden spirals of star-white snow moving irregularly—up then left, down and right—always in uniform, elegant motions.

Two dark silhouettes cut across the gray, snow-bearing sky and rang out like a rusted bell: the low, hoarse cry of a raven. For a moment they came together and held perfectly still before breaking apart. One flew northwest toward Ithaca, the other settled into an unseen nest high upon the tallest tree of Turtle Mountain.

I remember, then, at the beginning, being so afraid to mention the future; you had this look about you that you might run at any moment if I misstepped, but yet somehow, at the same time, that you might stay forever, and that you were deciding between the two. I will not pretend I understand it, but gradually, yet somehow within only a year, we grew into the strongest union I’ve ever known. We did not leave things unsaid; we did not make a game out of loving one another; we never let there be doubt about one another’s commitment to each other and the lengths we would go for one another, and still, somehow—speaking silently or loud—the complete truth that, above all else, we would protect each other’s independence.

San Fran trip (to expand upon in journal)

Henry miller library and the dog that looked like vin deseal, rainbow in the sprinkler, Gali in her red scarf and plush arm chairs under the ancient redwoods.

Fernwood for dinner on the back patio and watery ranch

Driving above the cloud line on the snaking roads of highway 1

Rocky point- Climbing down the empty mountain and then up it before lying out of the wind together, listening to bless the beginning, watching the sun fall into a big ball above the horizon before setting. Kissing completely exposed but isolated on the pointed rock jutting out into the sea.

Rescuing goldfish at pet smart

Brushing teeth in a Whole Foods restroom and moon shaped grapes.

Falling asleep to the sound of the ocean at the Carmel pull off, the car lighting up from time to time as headlights rounded the bend and sped past us.

Driving to Santa Cruz for coffee, then on to San Francisco.

Verve and taking the trolley down market st (it was made out of light wood like a sailboats berth and the windows let it the most magnificent light).

Cash preasley and his wonderful voice busking with a dream catcher on the end of his guitar.

Laying in the sun at the dog park. Watching the clouds move quickly above us. Explaining the feeling of an audio book ending on a sleep timer and the great dread it gave me not knowing when the voice would begin to dim to a hush and how I dreaded not knowing our end. Her comforting me. Us holding eachother there.

Isabella and soup dumplings at Shanghai dumpling king.

Gali and I watching the moon come up over the skyline at mission Dolores.

The candle light Joe concert. Magical. Quiet. Perfect. God is a string quartet in a quiet room.

More talk as we leave the city. All the way until a lone stretch of highway off the ocean just past half moon bay.

Long and intense conversation. I am crying by the end. And so is she. I thank her for loving all of me so fearlessly. It has changed my life. Many things said.

Night dips down sadly but come morning she is wrapped back up in me. The car bakes with early morning sun and we open a door to the ocean. Then we have the best cuddles we have ever had.

We certainly forget ourselves. We forget to comfort our minds with sweet words of assurance and encouragement. We forget the sight of our own eyes, lost in the simple touch-ups of applying makeup, or the frown of some self-described defect. Despite all of this looking, we forget to look past our own stare—into the complex that exists beyond their color.

We forget things we swore we never would, and this terrifies me. I feel cheated by it, and for all my nights of lying as still as I might, following thin threads in hope of new remembrance, I rarely come upon what I am looking for. So I write down as much as I dare.

Your so afraid of growing up Your so afraid of being alone

You have to start letting the room go quiet. You have to stop trying to please angry men

You have to stop trying to convince women that you are good. No one has doubts but you.

We’ve walked in unison five years now

I forget what the middle felt like but I remember the beginning plain as day.

Miles under our foot, down the lake to the salt mine and back to the old mill to cool ourselves in the swimming hole. Love in unison. Dreams in unison.

Los Angeles muddied the water a bit and i forget so much of what followed.

I remember your love and my grieving. A house full of laughter and then it would get so quiet and I’d walk around emptied and tired. Not because of you and Isabel but because of my lack ..: Some nights I’d dance alone in the kitchen and then scream into a sheet or pillow. It helped a bit and I tried to have myself together for your return.

I know you saw my pain, You tried to hold it too.. but Ive never been good at placing it on others, well at least in sharing my heart and mind. I’m sure my moods have weighed on you and others plenty.

Of course we had good times during those years. The show in November of 24’ and new years 25’ up in Santa Cruz and Big Sur.

Moments of what had existed before but life was now beginning to pull us quite thin.

Our passion compromised and needs shifting.

The end of my time in La was certainly the worst of us. Owl is partly to blame, well not him but his anger. I started living in van nuys with Gali and you saw me just a couple hours a week when I’d pick up clothes.

I know you felt like everything had been taken from you those last six months and now I was moving and acting real casual with it all. I just feel I gave you a thousand listening ears and sound advice too. I did my best and I’m sorry if my commitment waned at the end but I had found myself love. Love that I could look in the eye. Love that I could take my hat off infront of. Love that brought me to the floor in fits of laughter. It had been so long and never before like this.

I arrived back to the land just as the sky began to wake in a pale wash of blue and grey. The Walsh house glew orange through a half-moon window down the valley. The birds filled my ears with their constant song—a thousand calls and voices swirling around the goldenrod and dew-bearing grasses, tall and cricket-filled. I walked under the power lines and down my trail towards the faint stained glass and cut curtains coloring my windows.

A crescent moon, clear and white as bone, hung above the tree line as I plugged in my guitar to the Fishman and began playing a tune I’d started back in Los Angeles—a song about returning home. And here I sat in my shire, beside a shed full of plants and organs, built with care by the hands of myself and many who I love most.

Soon Gali, Micah, and Emma arrived and came over the hill, drenched in blue and still beyond the veil of a mushroom trip. Emma and Micah danced in laughter as I improvised a little song. The birds joined in unison as they swirled. Gali brushed her teeth beside me, hunched into herself to keep warm.

We entered the studio where our temporary mattress lay, and I drained the room of its golden light with the twist of a key. The light, now dim and gathering up mainly in bunches around the windows, was soft as I pulled the quilt up over Gali and me.