An old friend from long ago called me one night as I was sitting in front of the television watching re-runs. She had first graced my presence way back in my little hometown in grade school. We liked each other because neither of us cared for the big social cliques that went along with school. She had moved from out of state with her parents for her dad’s job. We hung out and talked for the half a school year that she was there. That summer, they moved back home, and I assumed she was a distant memory. But, here she was on the phone, a thousand miles away. We talked incessantly on the phone for the next few months, and rekindled the friendship that had never really had a chance to grow. We laughed and talked about serious things in the same breath. And, something began happening that until that moment I had only thought I had known. Your friendly wayfarer was falling head over heels in love with someone who lived a thousand miles away!

 

The conversations that I had with her on the phone were cathartic. I had found someone who could relate to me because she had been battling her own demons, albeit, not the chemical kind. That’s a story for another day, however. During the time that we talked, unrest was stirring within the band. The usual things associated with band management, coupled with the fact that one of our band members was a young kid of thirteen who had his father looming over his shoulder at all times. It became too much for me to handle, quite frankly, and one night it festered, came to a head, and popped all in one fell swoop. The original bass player for the band had fallen ill with pneumonia and it killed him. The day that we got the news, we were to play out of town. We all agreed to go on with the show, though none of us was thrilled with the idea. It was a big show.

 

When we got there and set up to play, the usual turmoil started with the father and the rich big shots he was entwining our beloved band with. It had, to that point, been focused on the Bluesman, who had taken it all in stride.  The father had begun to act very much like a “Soccer Mom” as regarded his son and the band. Looking back now, I understand his motivations, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was creating unrest within the band. He wanted his son to be the main spotlighted performer in the band, but, from the inception the Bluesman had insisted that we function as a band and not a vehicle for any one member. The Kid agreed, the father did not. He had taken up with some fairly well-to-do types, and they had fed his brain with ideas that they could make the Kid a star with or without us. The Bluesman and I had talked about this at length many times, and both agreed to keep on going until the end. So, with the weight of having to go fill the shoes of our fallen bass player,  struggling with the demon, and the love of my life a thousand miles away, I took the stage for sound check. After checking vocals on my mic by doing a run through on a couple of verses, the father came to the side of the stage and said, “Rich Guy doesn’t want you to sing tonight, only the Kid and the Bluesman.”.  I said alright, and went to the bar.

 

Drummer came and bellied up next to me and said “What’s up, man? You thinking about Bassman?”. I told him the tale of the Rich Guy’s request transmitted via Father and he grew even more sullen than he had been before hand. He immediately went over to Bluesman and told him the story; I saw the look of disgust cross the Bluesman’s face. This was not the first time any of us had had these sorts of demands made to us by Rich Guy, most of them had been made to Bluesman. I had told Bluesman that I didn’t agree with them asking him not to sing, but he was a grown man and he could do as he wished concerning the matter. I also told him that the first time Rich Guy, who had had absolutely no part in the formation or management of the band (those tasks had fallen squarely on me and Bluesman) I would walk away. Bluesman knew I meant it, and I saw him look at me from across the barroom with a look of knowledge on his face of what was coming.

 

I went to the latrine, and when I came out Bluesman was leaning against the wall, waiting for me. “I can’t do this anymore.” I said. He said, “I know, and I don’t blame you. If they had said it to me tonight, I would have walked out of here and never looked back”. I was disheartened. I borrowed Drummer’s cell phone and attempted to call my Love, but couldn’t get through. It was show time. We went on stage and played as we always did and brought the roof down. I swear Bluesman was at the top of his game that night, and when he did his signature slow blues I could just feel it  hanging there thick in the air. You could almost cut those blues they were so real that night. I played bass for our fallen brother, and no one else, that night. When we finished our set, I went to the bar and drank a few more; mulling over the events up to that point and how I just wanted to see my Love and hold her. As the night wore down, and all the other acts got up and did their thing, we loaded up the band and headed back for the hills. It was the last time I have shared a stage with Bluesman to this day, although I’m hoping we can do it again. I went home and went to sleep. The weight of the day felt like a lead brick on my shoulders, and all I wanted was to hold my Love close to me, and feel the comfort that was there in her arms.

 

 

The phone ringing brought me out of the  fog of deep sleep. It was my Love on the other end. Before she said anything, I said, “I quit the band last night.” There was a dead silence on the other end, because she knew how I had felt about that band, probably even more than Bluesman knew. “What?” I heard her say. So, I told her the story about Rich Guy and the father and how I was not going to do it anymore. She tried to reconcile it all and said I should think about it more before I quit. In the back of my mind, I knew that Rich Guy and the father, though the biggest part of it, were not the only reasons I had quit. It was an opening that I needed to break the demon’s hold on me. My Love had helped me begin to see the folly of my dance with the demon and I became determined that I would break its hold once and for all. During all of this, my mother had introduced another louse of a boyfriend into the equation. He was a drunk, and mom was becoming a drunk again as well. So, here I sat alone and a thousand miles away from the one person that I knew loved me without conditions. I had no more beloved band, and a man whom I had known and grown very close to was lying dead in a funeral home after having died very suddenly and unexpectedly. What I did next was surprising even to me.

 

 

 

 (Brief Interlude)

 

 

Over the course of a couple of months of talking to her on the phone, I had found the courage to tell my Love how I felt. It was undeniably the greatest feeling I ever had to hear her shedding tears of joy over a phone line spanning a gap of a thousand miles between us. We then had the burden of grappling with how we would go about being together. She had Doctors and family affairs close to her, and I had the band and my own family affairs. We just did not know how to do it. We agreed that she was going to take a weekend of vacation time and come hear the Bluesman and I play, and give us the opportunity to finally meet again for the first time face to face. When the time came for us to finally see each other, I was more nervous than I had ever been in my life. “What if she doesn’t find me attractive? What if I do something really stupid?” I was like a school kid about to go on his first date. Dear readers, to put it bluntly, I was a mess and I felt like I needed a drink. But I did not drink, my friends, it was far too important for me to be normal at this point.

 

This woman, this Love I had found had become far more important to me than anything I had previously known. She had brought my bedraggled and beaten soul up out of the ashes like the Phoenix and had breathed new life and vitality into my body. Through our conversations she had awakened a part of me that had long been dead; the part that loved. I was feeling like a new person trying to shake off the skin of the old one. My demons were still there, but they were starting to lose the fight. I knew that in order to be the kind of person I had to be for her I had to kill those monsters that had shadowed me for so long. Her presence in my life was far too precious to squander away doing the things that my mother had done. I found someone who loved me not because I was a cool musician and not based on how I looked, but solely on conversations in which I bared my soul. She knew the ugliness in my life, and it did not shake her. She loved me and that was the final word. The demons were losing but they fought the battle up to the bitter end.

 

That weekend was magical. I took her to places of interest around the little town that I lived in and showed her a slice of life that the Bluesman and I shared. But, most importantly, we could talk as we had over such a vast distance face to face. I could see that beautiful smile when I cracked a joke. I saw the tears forming in the corners of her eyes when I told her I loved her. And I held her hand in mine and knew that this was the place I needed to be. All the struggles and trials I had been through melted away when I held her close to me and for once in my life I saw them for what they were. Those things that had haunted me and tore my world apart were not real things. They could not possibly have any grasp on me if I did not let them. And that’s exactly what I had done, dear readers, I had let those demons win the fight for all those years. My Love was the hero in the story of my battle. She was the one who showed up to me in the middle of my darkest nights and whispered softly in my ear “It’s okay, I love you”. She may not know it, but she saved me from a monster that I could not have defeated without her.

 

I had never felt these emotions I was experiencing with such intensity before. I had loved people and held them dear to my heart before but not like this, dear friends, not like this. The war inside my mind did not end abruptly or easily. I was fighting a fierce battle within my psyche, but I had finally gained the upper hand because of the unlikeliest of heroes. Who would have known that a gentle and meek person like my Love could ever have played such a strong roll in such a violent battle from a thousand miles away? She did it, and I am living , sober proof of it.

 

 

 

Mom was in the stages of depression that one goes through when they lose a loved one in which they are afraid of being alone. My step-father had been the one man she had ever had a relationship with who actually cherished her existence and made her feel special. She missed him with a ferocity and I could see it in her face. It really came as no surprise to me when The New Boyfriend came into the picture. Mom had been out of the game for awhile now, but those old tricks aren’t hard to remember. She was afraid of being alone, so she went to someone who was afraid of being alone more than she was(misery loves company). It is the nature of the beast. I objected to it because I knew it was the wrong decision, but she refused and I knew better than to object too fervently because it would just drive her deeper into her reluctance to listen to reason. He was soon living under the same roof with us and it escalated quickly.

 

During the trials I was going through with the band, there were trials at home as well. The drunkenness was rampant on the part of New Boyfriend, and his behavior was becoming more and more belligerent. The second week after I quit the band, New Boyfriend pulled a drunk and came home shouting at mom. It was particularly heated and I intervened. I made the vow to them both then that if it did not stop, I would be going to My Love quicker than they knew. They did not take me seriously, but, I did. I began formulating my plan of attack in my mind before I ever mentioned it to my Love. I knew what I was going to do. The drama that continually played out in my house made it increasingly hard to fight the demons, and I knew that I could not give in to them this time. I called my Love one night and told her “Come get me” She was silent for a moment and then she asked “When?”. “I want you to come get me as soon as you can”  She said that she would call off work and take vacation days for the remainder of the week, and would leave out at lunch the next day. Dear reader, the plans were laid and your wayfarer would soon be united with his true Love.

 

 

 

 

 

And so it was, once again I was leaving a town and a chapter of my life behind under shadow, not having told anyone of my plans except my Love. This time I was not running away from anything, however, I was running to something. I was entering into what I knew was the final chapter of this epic battle that raged in the dark recesses of my ego for years. I was finding my place in this world a thousand miles from where I was born with my Love by my side.  This was the end-game, and the demons that had riddled my mind with guilt and shame were defeated. As I drove out of that town into the future, I felt calm in knowing that it was all over now. The hardest part of my life was a mere phantom; still lurking, but unable to stop me from my reaching my destination. The warriors were combined now, and we held each others hands tightly as we drove out of that town and into our future. My Love had finished the circle of Yin and Yang in my life, and now we were a complete whole that this monster nor any other in the material world could hinder. We had become a force to be reckoned with by all the darkness that had shattered our worlds. We would put those broken worlds back together as an indivisible whole, and take back what was ours.

 

Since that weekend, our life together has blossomed into a perfect union of two souls. We live for each other and the love we share. We are generally “boring” people who take pleasure in simple things. We go for walks in the park with our Pugs, Jesse and Skeeter. We visit historical sites, and go into the foothills of the Appalachian Mts. just for the heck of it. We are average, run of the mill people who don’t stir up any dust. We don’t have to now, the dust from our battle has settled and we stare at the light of a clear new day. In the Tao Te Ching, it says “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. My journey of a thousand miles certainly did. The step mine began with was a phone call from a long lost friend one faithful night at just the right time in my life. Nowadays, my Love and I don’t think much about the steps we make, but I can assure you, the next thousand miles we will walk together.

 

Since my Love came to me that night and carried me away from that town, I have not had the urge to drink. The demon was defeated the night my Love and I became one. There have been occasions since that I have had a beer and laughed at how awful it tastes against my palate. I went back and started studying that dusty old book of Chinese Philosophy again, as well. I found in it the words of a man who loved dissecting language to find out what made it tick. I found someone who wrote poetry that had a sense of humor while still dealing with the spiritual place we all have in this world. I realized that I had been carrying my truths around with me all the time in a little book of 81 short chapters written thousands of years ago by a man from a vastly different culture than my own. He knew he would reach me when he wrote that book, because he knew that there would always be people who viewed the world with the same eyes he did. Lao Tzu left behind for me a guidebook to living that was introduced to me at the age of seventeen by a friend who would ultimately introduce me to the darkest chapter of my life as well. I’m thankful to that friend, however, because without that dark chapter in my life, I may not have had the same appreciation for the truths in that book, and the companionship of a woman whose sole intent in this world is to love me for who I am.

 

peace, wayf

 

p/s.

 

 I haven't been very active on the blog lately, but I have started working on some new blues material and have become quite absorbed with it. I will be posting more frequently from now on.

 

   Looking back now, I am very happy that I made the choice I made and went to help my mother and Fred. It was, to be sure, one of the most painful and difficult things I have ever done, but the knowledge that I was there to help Fred in his most trying times and was grateful for my presence helped me to have some form of peace in the process. Mom worked out of town, so I was able to put her mind at ease by being there for Fred when she was not, and Fred’s mind was eased by the fact that he did not have to be by himself when she was away. I found a job within three days of arriving at my mom’s and began working third shift in a production facility driving forklift.

 

    During Fred’s illness, I made a few new friends in the small town they lived in. I had stumbled across a little guitar shop on the town square and became fast friends with one of the owners. Upon hearing me play some old country blues song, he informed me of a blues player who lived in the town and said I would like him. The bluesman was an older gentleman who had taken a young kid under his wing and taught him how to play blues. They played as a duo in all the small towns around the area and had garnered enough attention that the local paper had done a two page article on them. As it happened, the bluesman in question was an acquaintance of Fred’s (as is so often the case in small towns, everyone knows everyone), although the bluesman was a few years Fred’s senior.

 

    I met the bluesman and his young apprentice at a blues jam that was held in a local park, around the corner from our house. I was instantly captivated by his presence and his authenticity as a player. The kid was a fiery, bluesy rock player who, at the age of twelve was indeed better than most players many years older than he was. After their set, I walked up and introduced myself to Bluesman, and he invited me to use his guitar and sit in with the kid, who was still on stage playing with another local band. At the next break, Bluesman told the guy running the jam that he would like for me to get up and play a song with the kid. I was asked again, and reluctantly obliged. After that, the Bluesman gave me his number and told me to call him anytime and that we should get together and play. A friendship stronger than any other I have ever known was forged that spring day in a park in a small Texas town. The Bluesman and I quickly formed a mutual respect for each other based on our similar tastes in music. It wasn’t long before he started inviting me to play at their gigs with them. We had formed a trio before we knew it and it really began to take off.

 

   During all of this, Fred’s condition got gradually worse. I was off work the night that Fred went to the hospital for the last time. As he sat on the couch, laboring to breathe, he called me over to him. He held out his hand to me and I took it in mine. He was too weak to give a firm grip. He looked up at me with a weakness that was not customary for him and his eyes told me everything he wanted to say to me. The only words Fred said to me that night before the ambulance got there to take him to the hospital were “Thank you.” I told him he was welcome. It was the last conversation I would have with Fred. He died two weeks later in the hospital. I was relieved and saddened at the same time; relieved for Fred that he was finally free of the torment that he had endured for almost a year.  His sentence was over and he was no longer in pain.

 

  Time moved on, and our little blues band grew in popularity. We were getting rave reviews from everyone, and I was tickled pink that I was actually getting the chance to be a part of this with someone as authentic as my newfound friend. The Bluesman and I became fast friends. We went everywhere together. Anywhere you looked in that little town you could see us together. We must have made some pair to all the good ole boy farmers in that little north east Texas town; a 65 year old black man hanging out with a young, rail thin, hippy white boy. We didn’t care, we were enjoying ourselves. Once, we were having a conversation about making music and life in general and the Bluesman said something that has stuck with me ever since. “If I could do anything I wanted to do, I’d just want to teach the world to play the blues”. The Bluesman remains the best friend I have ever known. One day I’ll write more about him, but that one statement really sums him up. He is quite simply the most compassionate and giving man I have ever had the great fortune of knowing, and he taught me a lot about myself.

 

    I felt some old un-confronted demons tugging at my shirt tail. The drinking started taking hold again. It was just too much to be in those clubs and parties and see everyone drinking. I began breaking one of my own solemn vows; to never play when I was drunk. I would get hammered at gigs. It wasn’t like before, I was not doing the heavy drinking that I had begun doing before I left for mom’s, but it was enough. During all this, we began getting gigs in the big city, private parties and the like. I switched from guitar to bass for these gigs because our bass player wouldn’t travel long distances. We got the opportunity to cut a C.D, which we gladly took up. It was all for free, with the exception of the duplication prices, which we quickly made up for in sales. I was, during this time, re-introduced to a memory from the past. This would, once again, change my life forever.

 

To be continued…

 

 

  During all of the upheaval and strife I was experiencing, my mom had met a man who treated her as well as my father had. She had settled down with him, and they lived a relatively quiet existence together. I liked him upon meeting him. He was a sincere man; one of those people who you just automatically trust and respect as soon as you meet them. There was nothing fake or superficial about him whatsoever. He and I became friends and would often take off for rides by ourselves when I would go and visit (Mom had moved back to the city of her birth when my grandmother had gotten to sick to care for herself. It was about two hundred miles from where I was.) One day, as I was sitting at the apartment, Mom called. When I picked up the phone I heard the tears in her voice, “What’s wrong, mom?” “We just got back from the hospital. Fred has lung cancer.”

 

 I was stunned and could not speak. The feeling that you have when you hear those words spoken about someone you care about is indescribable. It is as if you have been told that a dear friend has died, but that they’re going to carry that death around with them for awhile before they finally succumb to it. For whatever reason, one of the most gentle and caring souls I had ever known was just handed a sentence of walking death and I was completely powerless to help. “I’ll be there in the morning,” I told mom, “get some rest. I love you, and tell Fred I love him, too.” I informed John of the situation and left him the remainder of that week’s check as payment for the rest of the month. He was not happy and did not understand my decision, but it was final and I told him as much. We have not spoken since and I have not been back to the place of my childhood since the day I left.

 

  I cried that night alone in my room. It was my mourning process, because I understood that he would not live through it. I had learned enough about the disease to know that chances were slim to none that he would pull through. I knew at this point my mom would need me more than she had ever needed me, and I knew that I needed to be there with her. No one in my family has ever understood that, because they all viewed Fred as an outsider. He was my friend, though, and he treated my mother with respect and courtesy. I loved him then, and I still love him, and there is no explanation more than that needed.

Chapter 3: Meeting it Head-on

 

  When I left my wife, I also left all my possessions, with the exception of one acoustic guitar and some clothes. My books and c.d.’s and all other personal belongings were left, and I never went to retrieve them. It was worth the loss to not have to deal with the useless drama that would undoubtedly occur.

 

  So, armed with my acoustic guitar, a new job driving a forklift (which is my favorite work), and a drinking buddy of long standing, I stood yet again on a precipice not knowing where I was going or what to do next. It’s funny, but as I sit here looking back on all of this and reflecting on other people’s personal experiences, I realize that almost every moment of any given person’s life is spent on that precipice. None of us ever really have an inclination of what life is going to hand us, although some of us have very deep seated desires about what it should produce. At that point in my life, I really had no desires for anything except a return to normalcy. I spent the majority of my time off in my bedroom with the guitar, so as to remove myself from the undue temptation of drinking as much as possible. To a degree, it worked. As a side effect of this, in a three month period I wrote about thirty songs. It was the most prolific time in my life as concerns original songs. (I have forgotten more of those songs than I can remember now, however.)

 

  The songs I wrote during that time were therapy; a cleansing and washing away of the dirt that had soiled my existence.  The outpouring of my innermost darkness into rhyme and meter, and a catharsis for the guilt I had carried for so long about all the choices I myself had made that were so detrimental to me. I understood what so many songwriters meant when they spoke of their songs as their “children”, because they became dear to me. The songs seemed to write themselves, and only needed me as a vehicle to bring them to life. I have not had quite the same spiritual feeling while writing music since, although music has taken on an entirely different meaning in my life because of that period. Something else was going on, however, that would impact me in ways that would once again set the ball rolling in an entirely different direction than I had anticipated.

 

To be continued... 

 

 

 

This is just to let anyone who may be interested know that E.M. Diesel and Miss Six Foot Blonde were gracious enough to post an article about Muddy Waters that I wrote on their new Blog "Needs More Cowbell". 

 

"Cowbell" is proving to be loads of fun, with lots of intriguing discussions so far about music. If you are like me and enjoy music discussion, you should definitely check out this new blog!

 

Thanks Six and D. ! You guys truly do rock!

 

Peace, wayf