Funny, random things make you remember...
It was kind of like driving around with someone who was about to die. You wanted that 'last drive' to be a memorable one, full of reflection and peacefulness. On Monday I drove Kristin's 1994 Toyota Carolla wagon up and over the Kancamagus Highway on its 'last drive'. We were trading it in for cash value on new rig, and I'd soon be returning back up and over the Kanc in a 2004 Volvo S60. There's a faster way to get where I was going. But, that nice little car deserved a beautiful last drive, where we could commune and reflect.
There were rainclouds about, but it was a beautiful day. The mountains were clouded in mist, and the setting perfect for that faithful and reliable little rig. I'd just cut the deployed air bags out, so it didn't look quite as pretty. Ascending up the winding roads I hear Roy P, the Skiing DJ on WMWV radio in North Conway, announce that he was going to play "The Cars!"
First song comes on, You're All I Got Tonight. Hmm, I think, Jeff and I loved that album. We played it a hundred times together. At least. Memories start to filter back in after a crazy week of work, family and summertimes. That song comes to its end and I sing to myself the opening sounds of the next song, which is one of my favorite ALL TIME SONGS: Bye Bye Love. Lo and behold, that song starts playing.
Okay now, the memories are really flying about Jeff and I. I can see us putting the album (yes, the album) on his turntable and making the tape of it for his car. Then that song starts, Jeff at the wheel, a six pack in a brown paper bag on my lap, I open the first beers with a bottle opener he keeps in the console between the seats. Listen to that Jeff, the way the words hammer out:
I can't feel this way much longer
expecting to survive
with all these hidden innuendos
just waiting to arrive
it's such a wavy midnight
and you slip into insane
electric angel rock and roller
I hear what you're playin'
Alright, I admit, the tears started to flow a bit. It's been a big few months for us in the Pollard homestead, busy times...so, that would explain the tears, right?
Then, that song ends, and we know the next song by heart. It starts playing, Moving In Stereo:
Its so easy to blow up your problems
Its so easy to play up your breakdown
Its so easy to fly through a window
Its so easy to fool with the sound
Its so tough to get up
Its so tough
Its so tough to live up
Its so tough on you
Alright now, an occasional sob breaks through the clouds. My hands grip the wheel tightly. The drive is sublime, because I'm with Jeff. The higher up I go on the Kanc the radio station starts to static. I'm losing the signal right during Moving In Stereo...
That's the way I've felt about Jeff for the last few months...like I can't quite hear him. I've been trying to listen real hard. I need that male-peer-brother-mentor-bestfriend-soulmate aspect back in my life. We're moving in stereo, but every time I crook my head to listen closely all I can hear is static.
Jeff, listen, you know the next song? All Mixed Up, the last song on the album. I can barely drive when I hear it (I'm changing the 'she' to'he'):
it's all mixed up
it's all mixed up
it's all mixed up
he says to leave it to me
everything'll be alright
(be alright)
he says to leave it to me, yeah
everything'll be alright
(be alright)
if you leave it to me
everything'll be alright
(be alright)
yeah, if you leave it to me
(leave it to me)
(be alright)
(be alright)
(be alright)
(be alright)
To wrap this all up, I hearken to the beginning of that same Cars album. Let The Good Times Roll starts it off. But, herein, I end it with that song. The visceral response to hearing those Cars songs in the car was the closest contact I've felt with Jeff in over a year. Driving in the car, listening to The Cars with Jeff, for the one-hundred-and-first time. At least...
Let The Good Times Roll:
Let the stories be told
They can say what they want
Let the photos be old
Let them show what they want
Let them leave you up in the air
Let them brush your rock and roll hair
Let the good times roll
Let the good times roll-oll
Wont you let the good times roll
posted by Panguich at 12:27 PM
1 Comments:
It cannot be an accident -- there are no accidents -- that I awoke dreaming of Jeff this morning. He must have known I was ready to learn of his passing. In some way, I must be. But I don't know it now.
I met Jeff in 1985. I was a client. He became a friend. He taught me to appreciate the hilarity of cats. He taught me the proper technique for "slurping" martinis. He taught me the joys of The Student Prince Cafe in Springfield, MA. He taught me that drinking Spaten at the Prince before seeing B.B. King at the Paramount Theater was nothing less than a sacred rite.
When Jeff moved to Montana, I missed him. I didn't know how much until I learned of his passing today while searching for him on the Web after my dream. He was the boy/man. He was Peter Pan. If he wouldn't age, he couldn't die. I cannot accept his passing. I will not. Since I don't have his gift of eternal youth, I'll have to learn to live with it. But I'm diminished, as all of us are.
In remembering Jeff, I'll listen to Robbie Robertson's "Fallen Angel" many times today. And in his honor, I'll leave this poem. I wrote it in 1976, the year Jeff and I were 22. I had no idea then that I'd written it for Jeff, for today. I suspect Jeff knew it all the time, and he's been wondering what took me so long to post it. Then again, he knew I wasn't ready.
The Age of Aquarius
There's a neighborhood I lived in
For the best part of my youth.
Friends and neighbors came and went and left their souls.
Over all the years I lived there,
I was sending down my roots,
One for every year I counted goals.
And those roots were buried mountains,
Deep and steadfast under me,
A base on which to build my life's success.
If whatever I was building ever faltered in the least,
The foundation underneath would bear the stress.
But my goals were finest powder
Scattered freely in the wind,
In a gust of thought they're gone and soon forgot.
Impassioned whispered promises from ladies of the night:
For a while they seem real and then they're not.
So I move without direction,
Ever dreaming, ever free
From the bondage of commitment to a cause.
And I wonder if this freedom isn't bondage nonetheless,
If a dreamer isn't one of Nature's flaws.
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