Clean me up.

 

 

 (Suzanne Kulperger photo)

 

If I’m lucky enough to die in the right place, here’s what I’d like them to do:

Wash my body thoroughly - wash off the thirty five years of sawdust - wash off the two years of restaurant kitchen grease - wash off the eight months of night shift fry-o-lator oil - wash off the year of taxi driving grit - wash off the year-and-a-half of machine shop grime - wash off the four years of charcoal, ink, paint and clay.

When that’s all gone, the scars will show. The scars will tell their little stories from the first to the last.

 

5W, 2X20

How big is the big night?  How off is the off-night?

How sweet is the limelight, or would it be sour?
How far from the big deal, from the city that never sleeps?
How big is the free meal for us hungry little peeps?
Playing our songs, near empty bar in the off season - she and her party of four, corner booth all to themselves.
Two thirds of the trio, we were doing an earnest version of a Dylan classic
when she walked by and said “…I like what you’re doing”.

Even without the two twenties, the five words would’ve been enough.
After all, we split the tips three ways - buy a drink or two at the bar and there ya go.
But to be able to say - even years afterwards - that on a dark off-season night in a mostly empty bar
“...Patti Smith put two twenties in our tip jar.” 

Five words and two twenties.

 

 

Um, why singing?

Another one of those 'found-in-a-drawer' kind of things from a few years back...

....tonight I was remembering something I read a long time ago - and a dream I had back then. I had read an article about how some anthropologists had found evidence of a strain of Homo-something-or-other - something post cro-magnon but maybe pre-Homo Sapiens. They had lived in caves in the south of France. The article said that from the physical evidence the anthropologists had gathered and evaluated that this strain of humanoids (people) were actually a step up from what we eventually became. Larger brains, for one thing. Maybe evidence of other cultural achievements (pre-internet, pre-bronze age even, most likely).
So somewhere around the reading of this article I had a dream. An actual sleeping-eyes-closed dream thing. In the dream there was a person in a cave, lying on a stone carved-out bed thing and the person that was in the dream just raised his voice in song - very naturally, in a way that was clear to me was just a normal mode of expression - there might be things that called for other forms of communication, and some things that were just best expressed with a combination of melody, sounds, meter....whatever.
There are times when I feel that singing completes me in a way - hearing people sing touches us in a way that makes something feel whole. Sad songs, happy songs, silly songs....it's a mode of expression that we need and we miss it when we're away from it for too long.

 Looking through notes, finding memories...

 

 4/19/12
Why am I sitting in the ferry terminal? Because I missed the ferry 

and now I have to / now I get to 

write a song about missing the ferry.

Where would I rather be?
I’d like to rent a little room in an old seaside inn for myself and the three girls working behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts this morning. We could while away the day up there and then go down to dinner, all smiley.
I wouldn’t be worried about missing the ferry - there’s another one on some other day.
A really good friend of mine died last week - he’s no longer worried at all. At least it’s Spring - still two thirds of the year between us and the dark cold heart.
I’d like to be wrapped in a blanket, with seawater soaking my hair, salt on my face. I’d like to be in some other place.

Writing about writing - August 28, 2022

 

Ahh, this impulse - this desire to take part in the ancient art of stitching words to music and vice versa.

A missed opportunity plants something in your memory the way that a bruised finger remembers a car door.

So here I am, asking what’s the reward for having lived so long now that living involves all these aches and pains. Well maybe the reward is that your fingers still work your ears still hear, and you still remember most of the words maybe the reward is that you’ve found these friends
who lend their fingers and voices to your songs.

 A part-time songwriter’s song

(Dedicated to the family and friends)

 

I’m small time and I’m part time

and I write songs with short lines

‘cause life is short, and I think nothing should be left unsaid.

Memories float like little clouds above my head.

I’m small time, I’m part time

I write some songs, and they’re part mine

and part yours, ‘cause I wouldn’t be here without you.

I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be - 

north of the canal in this old house

and I think I’ve learned how not to try too hard.

Old times and good times

Gin-and-tonic-and-lime times

memories floating like little clouds above my head

Summer evenings out in Cape May Point

family and friends filling up the joint

someone does the cooking someone does the washing 

and we all do the laughing

The sun goes down, the lights come on

the lights come on, the talk goes on

and the love is so strong

you couldn’t cut it with a knife 

So grateful for memories like this in my life,

I’m so grateful for these memories in my life.

I’m small time, I’m part time

I write some songs, and they’re part mine

and part yours, ‘cause I couldn’t be here without you.

I think I’m right where I’m supposed to be,

north of the canal in this old house

and I think I’ve learned how not to try too hard -

I hope I’ve learned how not to try too hard.

 I am forty acres

Or 20, or 10 or 15

and at the end of every day

I plow me under.

Alcohol runs the plow,

a couple of beers and half a bottle of wine.

I am overrun.

I will rise like a bean sprout tomorrow morning

- sleep-step to the coffee maker.

And be the field where the fruits of my labor

grow.

The middle child

I'd like to have nothing to do 

one of these years when Spring arrives. 

We are always so busy un-Wintering ourselves and preparing for Summer. 

It sucks, Spring. 

What always happens to you sucks. 

The most in-between of the seasons - somehow you seem to get taken for granted. All your effort, and we run around with our buzzing mowers and our dripping brushes. 

We trample the tender shoots, we miss the sleight-of-hand adjustment to the angle of sunlight.

I promise this to you and to me - one of these years I will have nothing to do but enjoy your arrival.