The Man Who Was No Longer There

It should be noted that Hank Oak is back in town. He walked into Miss Kitty's kitchen this eve, as I was makin' up some victuals, and I said that I was glad to see him, and: "Where the hell you been? Last time I checked, you were goin' to Tequila!"
"For four days," he responded. Tequila actually is the name of a village in Mejico, turns out, and although he'd planned to stay there a month, we hadn't heard from him for six. He had, in fact, only been there four days, and some explanation was certainly in order. I received it, by fits and by starts, over the course of the bi-weekly Tuesday night dinner thing.
Turns out that he has turned his back on his old career in tech support, and is now making pseudo-Indo food at this Tea/food joint up on Belmont favored by hippies and yuppies. Thing is; the guy knows more about food than I've even forgot, and he has never even worked in a kitchen, like me. Tha' don't matter. What matters is that we are making plans for a dinner party competition, and perhaps putting together a food magazine for actual people, and he wanted to know where to find me, so we could go downtown and make fun of the awful people on First Thursday. "Well, I live over the Troika," I says.
"Where?"
"Over the coffee shop? Across the street from where you used to live?"
"Ohhhh!" he said. "Hey, do you live in the apartment where the guy who died lived?"
"I live in his room," I said.
"AAAAHHHH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!"
"Yeah, I know, 'take care'!"
It's true, though. That's where Quicksilver died. He had a congential heart defect, and it was gonna get him some day, and on one particular morning of his twenty-fifth (?) year, it happened. I remember, because I was walking into the Troika, where I worked, at the time.
I was greeted by this little poodle dude who was dating one of the upstairs ladies. He was in tears, and when I inquired why, he told me, and I immediately was no longer in the mood to work.
Quicksilver was the nicest one of the activists, by any stretch. "He reserved his anger for The Man," was how his girlfriend put it. She put it to me on the occasion of his being dead one month. She was also the one who had been jarred awake by the convulsions of his body, trying to live, even though the heart was dead, the brain soon to follow.
They called out the ambulance, and unfortunately, News Channel Eight just happened to be driving by (or some loser local affiliate; it scarcely matters which one), saw the commotion, and couldn't get anything clear out of everyone, as every person involved was either grieving or a emergency services professional. They determined that since the near-deceased was tatooed and twenty-something, that clearly drugs had been involved. Thanks, as always, to you fucking coke freaks who make too much money, and are qualified to eat lunch at best, who nonetheless report the news.
A week before, he had been on the news, when the Nice Mister Bush had been in town. A lot of people (including infants, I needn't remind you) showed up on the news that day, being pepper sprayed, but Quicksilver made the front page of the paper, and I believe CNN. I had stood in the middle of all of it, wearing a suit and shades, photographing it all, as people on either side were being beaten and gassed...
I'm straying from the point. Our friend was dead. The nice one. I spent the rest of that day at work having to break the news to people who had not yet heard, and playing mournful songs. But far worse than this was that I also wasn't going to lie to strangers, and that led to awful exchanges:
(The chick with bilateral myopia from across the street says) "Well you know; Death Is A Celebration!"
(To which I respond) "I understand your point. Your comment is ill-timed."
And later, I go back to Gringa Alta Prima's joint, and I finally get to have the good solid cry I'd been needing to have all day. All day long, I'd been inadvertantly playing these songs that I'd just brought with me, but seemed like farewells for the Quicksilver. "Hold To the Unchanging Hand of God" by Ry Cooder, "Uncloudy Day" by the Staple Singers, and that song by Takako Minekawa where she just keeps saying, "In the skyyy....In the skyyy..."
Then I make the mistake of goin' down to My Fuckin' Pal, where I encounter a drunk bunch of people I parenthetically know. One is this silly girl with whom I had once shot pool. I told her the story. She decides that the best way to deal with this information is to say-"Well, in Mex-ican cul-ture, death is a celebration!"
To which I could only respond, "I ain't Mexican!", when of course what I really meant was, ' you silly white fuck, could 'ya just shut up for half a second, and not turn everything into your anthro seminar?'
I went outside for half a minute, to gather my thoughts, and was pursued by her table-mate and acquaintance of mine, Zephry. He chooses to respond to my distress by drunkenly gripping my hand and saying, "But we're still alive. We're still alive!"
I agreed, thanked him, and went back inside.
I encountered another group of people with whom I was parenthetically acquainted. For some reason, I still couldn't keep how I was feeling inside sufficiently, and told them exactly what was on my mind at the moment. One of them said, "Well, you know what they say; Grief is for The Living."
"I've never heard it expressed otherwise. You know, maybe I shouldn't have brought it up."
The rest of them rushed to make up, but by that time, I was over this whole being in public thing. Wherever I went, people had the awful judgement of either trying to make this actual death of someone I liked and could no longer talk to into either some awful Grieving seminar that they'd learned in Counseling, or some Life Affirming bullshit, of which it was neither. I've been well acquainted with Death my entire life, and don't consider it to be something out of the ordinary. At the same time, I also feel that it's entirely okay to be bummed about it. The fact that the rest of these people couldn't see that is a monument to more than just their crap communication skills.
Pathetic as it may be, I chose to deal with this by making a mix tape. Probably this is the one I should have analyzed, in lieu of the last entry, but it's not. It was called 'The Man Who Was No Longer There'. Side A is titled 'Grief Is For The Living', and has a somber aspect to it, and side B is titled, 'But We're Still Alive', which has just the opposite aspect.
Even that has a story. The next day, a friend was driving me up to ( a cemetary, of all places, to look at the view), and I was telling him the story of the last couple days, including the mix tape part. He chose this as being an appropriate time to tell me about the inherent superiority of MP3 technology, as opposed to those silly old magnetic tape things. I chose to not throttle him, on that occasion.
I missed the ash-scattering ceremony out at the coast, as I was not invited, and had to work in any case. It turns out that Quicksilver's mom had the zinger that day. She thanked those assembled for coming, and pointed out that they all clearly had 'big hearts'..."Hopefully not as big as his was, but..."
And the wake was the following weekend. It was too damn full of silly Wobblies who showed up ostensibly to say farewell to a brother union member, but it quickly regressed into a stupid party, with too many damn strangers. It was disappointing, and still too damn sad.
The aforementioned girlfriend dragged The Reverend and I into the apartment where I curently live, and poured three shots of whiskey. We held them aloft, waiting for the words to come. They didn't.
"You know," I said.
"You know," the other two said, and we drank it down.

Anatomy of a mix tape

"The Long Walk Out", a ninety-minute mix tape, was in production late fall 2003 to late winter 2004. Like all of them somewhat do, it provides a sharp insight into the mind of the mixmaster.
Not long before I began the arrangement and started thinking about thematic elements, the considerations were: how do I arrange all the undifferentiated great shit I was hearing, largely piano-based, into a cohesive whole, and not something K-Tel-esque? And of course, whenever I make a break-up mix, I know that I bear a strong chance of reliving every shitty event of the time period every time I play the damn thing. Nonetheless, it's always cleansing to do these things, and like I told myself at the time, Gotta Find A Place To Put All This Great Music!
Not long before, Gringa Alta Prima and I had split up, well...I felt at the time that I was sort of being casually brushed aside, shortly after a ruinously expensive cross country trip to see her. Then-nothing. No contact, and when it came, it was incredibly weird and contrived-feeling. The worst part was that I knew she was right, and was probably handling it the way I would have handled it...Provided I didn't care very much myself...
We start with Cat Power's "I Don't Blame You". It has nothing to do with romance as such, but is both somber and hopeful, and the sentiment of the chorus was something I was just starting to feel. I'm pretty sure that this song is addressed to someone who is no longer alive, and that's how I felt. Someone had ceased to be, in my life.
The next one, Cat Stevens' "Maybe You're Right", is one of the greatest break-up songs of all time, and also expresses exactly how I felt-no fault more predominantly on one side or the other, and at this point, we're all tired of talking about it.
"Sweet Adeline" by Elliot Smith comes next. What's to say here? All his songs tend to be about the themes I was in the mood to explore...
"Long Long Long" by the Beatles is next. It too, I swear, is addressing someone who is not so much gone as they are Dead. "How could I ever...misplace you..."; creeepy. Not only is she dead, it kind of sounds like George Harrison killed her.
Shortly after this, I read the lyrics, and realized that I was overcome with the somber-ness of the music. This actually is a relatively cheerful song; you just wouldn't know it.
"We're An American Band" by Yo La Tengo is next. The twin vocals of Georgia and Ira; "Driving in the sand...The world is on fire..." It's a beginning that is near-hopeful, starting to see over the top. The destruction is all around you, but you know that you'll make it, at least. But you're still angry, and you need a purgative. It comes in the form of a lengthy noise guitar jam, much longer than the vocal part.
Then comes "Red" by the Dirty 3 . It is entirely instrumental; drums, guitar, viola. And angry, angry, angry: it just gets faster and faster, more reckless and sloppy, finally crashing at the end into a squall of feedback.
I don't know the name of the next song. It's by the High Llamas from their album "Cold and Bouncy", track ten. It sort of sounds like it's underwater. It's calming, and resolves, with each cycle, into something clearer and less submerged. Like you're emerging from anger and confusion.
The next one is "Baby Lulu" by Stereolab. I can't really tell what it's about, and only included it because it's so beautiful, and was constantly on my mind at the time. The horn section comforted me.
Then, the real wild card: "Textuell" by Oval. It's so shapeless, and formless, it's hard to know how to feel about it. It journeys through the fog, one light blinking dimly on the pier behind it, as it goes gawd-knows-where. Something is about to change.
And in real life, something did change. I met Gringa Alta Segunda. She had often been randomly mistaken for Gringa Alta Prima, walking down the street, and we fell into it very deeply, almost immediately.
Nonetheless, the tape has not quite begun to reflect this yet. "Tiny Decision" by The Aluminum Group is still in dazed, I-still-don't-know-what-just-happened mode. It is this odd little meditation of lost love, viewed through the metaphor of Adam and Eve leaving the Garden. Cheesy, yet somehow it works. "The World and the Delicate Pair/pulled the wool over the Great Surveyor/for the World had taken its time/for the Pair to make up their mind/and the way they made it up/made it time for them to go."
"Sally's Tomato", from the 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' soundtrack by Henry Mancini, follows. It is sexy and quiet. It is followed by "Hold Me", by Fleetwood Mac. A new beginning; "Can't you understand me? Baby don't you hand me no lies. Although it doesn't matter; you 'n me got plenty of time. There's nobody in the future, so baby I bid you my love. Step for you to dance to: stick your hand inside of my glove..." On our first date, Gringa Alta Segunda confessed her love for this song, shortly before we decided to wait in bed for the salmon I was baking her.
The next side begins with "Gently Waves" by Takako Minekawa. It is everything the title suggests, and is indicative of how content I am now feeling.
Following this is "Over The River" by the High Llamas. An instrumental, growing more lush and gorgeous with each passing second, almost ridiculous, never cloying. She liked that one, too. I said, "Doesn't it just kill you with its beauty?"
"Wear Your Love Like Heaven" by Donovan is next. It's just something to put after the previous song that might just approach it in terms of beauty, which is difficult.
And then we're at "Olivia Lost" by Joan of Arc. This is a playful and weird song by that most p&w of bands. "Some people are just lucky I guess, and they're born lookin' tired...But weren't we always in a hurry, and an hour late for everything?" And here is the beginning of the trouble, as well. There is too much confusion inherent in the good thing. "Half asleep, everyone looks funny..." Y'just know it isn't gonna last, but there goes the couple on the screen, insisting on making plans for the future.
"Such Great Heights" by Postal Service: another song about fooling yourself. It's so cheerful, you wanna box the guy's ears and just say, 'Wake the fuck up!'.
"Up the Junction" by Squeeze: "I never thought it would happen, with me and the girl from Clapham...I said, 'You are a lady'. Perhaps she said, 'I may be'..." It's sort of relevant, but really I just wanted a song by Squeeze in here; they excel at this sort of song. It's also sort of a song that knows it's been wrong, "I'd beg for some forgiveness, but beggin's not my business..."
Another High Llamas song that I don't know the name of follows. It's a pretty instrumental, but there is a feeling of furtiveness and potential loss around the corner. The overall effect is that of the sun setting on a beautiful day, darkness falling.
"Excuse me please as I wipe a tear away from an eye that sees there's nothing there to trust..." So begins, with a crash, the next song. It is "Trust" by The Pretty Things, and records how, just before, I 'd had a bad feeling one Friday evening, after being blown off for too long, and entered into Gringa Alta Segunda's room to find her in bed with The Colonel, who'd introduced us. I'm mad, but casual. I ask him if he'd mind leaving, so she and I could talk. No problem, says he, putting on his shorts. He pauses. "Hey, you've never seen my cock before!" he says, perhaps trying to lighten the situation.
"Still haven't," I say, staring at her.
The song that follows is "The Porpoise Song", which begins the movie 'Head', in which the Monkees bid farewell to show-biz. "My my, the clock in the sky is pounding away; there's so much to say"...What's to say? I drank up an entire paycheck in a weekend. I wasn't there. I was going away. I had never been there. People ain't worth it. "The porpoise is laughing, 'goodbye, goodbye'."
Then it's "Flowers of Memory" by Lambchop. A beautiful song, it is nonetheless recorded in some coffeeshop in Louisville, and you can only sort of hear what the guy is saying. Something along the lines of "Oh forgive me...I ain't kiddin' you, oh no..." I'm never not seeing my own fault in disasters. I've caused several, been around for many, and can't help thinking that maybe I even was responsible for more than I've noticed. At one point, as an aside, he sings, "My God, I'm an idiot..."
"Gasoline Alley" by Rod Stewart follows. My roommate had been playing it constantly, and I'd always been enthralled by its melody line. It comforted me. It too is a song about going away, or going back. "Just let it be known that my intentions were good, I'd be singin' in my alley if I could...Just one favor I'll be asking you; don't bury me here, it's too cold."
Lastly but not leastly, the first song off of 'Requiem For An Almost Lady', which Lee Hazlewood recorded after Nancy Sinatra dumped him. Perhaps the ultimate break-up album. She had liked it, too...Second only to The Ladybug Transistor's 'Beverly Atonale' on her list of great albums for laying around enjoying each other.
The song is called, "I'm glad I Never", and I quote it here in its entirety:
"(Spoken) In the beginning there was nothing. But it was kinda fun watching Nothing grow.
(Sung) You came walking into my life
carrying your own dreams
You coulda been...Yeah, you coulda been good
So why were you so goddamn mean?
But 'til you, I never had any fun.
But I sure am glad I never
Ain't you glad I never?
Be glad I never owned a gun."
Perfect. There's a lot more to the entire story than I've said here, but I feel I've crossed enough lines by writing this here at all. Sitting around staring at the ocean for a week, later that summer, I concluded once and for all that I was done with women both skinnier and taller than I am (which is a shame, because now I find them incredibly attractive), and as far as Segunda goes, I was sort of thinking of a moratorium on Scorpios, too. I nevertheless went and broke that one a few months later, to my utter misfortune (I'm looking at you, Wrong Again Evans).
What can I tell ya'? Music; it'll kill ya'.