Just some stuff I've been working on while taking partial leave. Cindy
Dirty Pioneers, the
State of the State, and a Fabulous Woman Who Dances
1. Looking
out in wonder, I imagine, and not unkindly,
at
their dufus fans and devotees, through the giant tinted windows of their
megalithic bus,
the
Singer and her Dirty Pioneers
ramble
all over these dirty states, a rolling holy
boulder
down the crazed and crumbling lanes
of
one sad and scary, scared America. Roadies, I’m sure, are always along,
but
in the Pioneers’ roadshow also spouses & kids, sisters & mums,
a
funny rock and roll tour
right
out of Exodus crossed with Flintstones
plus
Patsy Cline if maybe she had married
everyone
in Pearl Jam.
And
so just the right home for a fabulous woman who dances, goes completely
tornadic,
I heard, doing her thing in intimate clubs, sleek civic centers,
grassy
heartland festivals smelling of sunblock and beer, and Venue
Security,
once, even had to restrain her. One time they roped off a place just for her.
But
the band just loves her abandon, I think they love her abandon. They even
made a video
of
this proverbial wildcat spinning
all
over a vast darkened floor, completely alone to "Mainstream Kid,"
lights
sparking upward and her hair
flailing
upward and the chief thing seems to be
that
she doesn't give a damn about anything
you
might call external, absolute
authority.
Still,
I’m not completely sure that she’s free,
or
only feels herself free, or if feeling free
actually
does make us
free—am
I overthinking this a bit?—
or
if she isn’t in fact doing battle, ferocious but hilarious battle
with
something monumentally
difficult
to dance. I mean say. I mean dance.
*
It’s
funny: the crew watches the fans through blind windows outside,
who
watch the beloved singer inside,
who
watches the dancer
outside, inside,
no-side.
*
It
slightly sickened and thrilled me today
to
realize the only way to be free
of
death is to die.
And
yet there she is, the woman who dances. In flesh.
At
least I think
she’s
made of flesh.
2.
I
saw her at a concert this year, squished into a nutsoid crowd
that
was kind of trying to eat
the
stage. It was New Year’s Eve in a country
lately
inhospitable, you might say, a little less than welcoming
to
desperate refugees. And a city well-known for its colorful (you might say)
criminal
history, but also its blues, divine northern blues! and water
that
comes right up into the thick of it. Anyway, even in the stir, even in the
crush
of
that godawful crowd, I could see our dancing woman leap, I mean wind
right
out of herself, dancing
with
the very air itself. And let me tell you this: that’s not even
possible.
Or legal, I don’t think. I mean, they outlawed heavenly bliss
on
earth
a
long time ago now. Clear back at the start.
The
bastards.
And yet there she is. ..
*
Meanwhile,
the voice that quickens the dancer and all of us,
the
Singer’s voice so manifestly
correct
for this human strangeness unending, meaning downright gorgeously replete
with
error—little yelps and skips and hoarse-sounding, even growl-like
stuff, even squeaks—
is
not yet illegal like heavenly joy
on
earth. Although maybe it should be.
We
don’t allow dead men walking
to
listen to music, correct? The agitation
can
become extreme. They won’t be restrained.
Aside
from the Fender and Gretsch (or Martin or Collins), Jack
plays
to the right of the Singer, Mac to the left—
I
think. Jack has crazier art running down his whole arm, or something,
and
someone’s jaw is a little more round. Wait! I just found on the web:
Mac’s front teeth overlap
just a bit. ID solved!
Now I’ve only to figure
out, if I spot them some day,
how I’ll ask them to open
their mouths
so I can stare at their
teeth.
I’m not even identical to
myself.
*
Still,
there’s no better seat than up front. I’m talking Row A, dead Center,
practically mashed
into the stage. So you watch the
concert looking straight up, or nearly.
So you’re just about surgically
aligned
with
the Truth and the Light and the Way. It kinda hurts, doesn't it, such
sweetness.
And
yet you long for a backstage pass, the ultimate pass, a really kickass VIP
ticket.
You
don’t know about Truth, Light, and whatever—
but
you imagine, at the least, that someone beloved
will
shake your hand, pose for a pic, write down their name in amazing letters.
You
may even do whisky shooters together.
They’ll
confirm that you exist. They’ll tell you everything.
*
Meanwhile,
the Singer’s so brilliant even her flaws are
brilliant,
and her imperfections will bust up your heart,
they’re
so perfectly absent. Well, except for her human, very human
condition.
She needs that to sing. And the truest song
has
something about it a little bit fierce, don’t you think? It won’t line
up,
it still wants to argue
with
the artist, with the producer, with your mother.
It
refuses to not be about grief. It won’t console anyone.
If
we’re not careful, this miserable world’s going to kill us
with
beauty.
*
Oh,
I know; the band in truth is comprised of mere mortals.
I’m
ok about that. I already know
that.
The human celebrity never quite matches
the
luminous dot in your brain
which
is always withdrawing
and
dragging you along. They’re just guys
who
scratch bug bites, tie their shoes crooked,
hiccup
like everyone else. That’s ok. That’s good.
Perfect
alignment only works for the planets,
and
perfection itself, well, is boring.
But
I still want the pass. The ultimate pass.
1.
She tosses them out to the
crowd like after-dinner mints
at the end of her most
devastating performances. She’s a little bit
crazy like that.
One went streaking over my
head like a drone
gone AWOL on Adderall.
She otherwise lines them up
on the neck of the mike
like rounds of ammunition,
or even the worrisome
serpent of old.
A lot of people, by the
way, don’t believe
in the mystical hoodoo I’m
helpless
not to ponder. I don’t
either. It’s not a matter of belief.
It’s a matter of frequent
flyer miles, yeah, and
listening, and pining,
and like. Which can apparently go on forever.
like the worrisome serpent of old
*
I imagine a boomer couple
just retired, maybe,
local hipsters geeking out
on a scene,
or more likely some good
and kind kid from two states away
(she came wearing the exact
floppy fedora
her favorite singer wears),
amazed now to snag the prize from the air
and hold it gingerly in the
palm of her hand
like the final word, or a
key.
Then remembering she can’t
remember
what it’s supposed to
unlock.
*
And green. Green. I have to keep saying it, I
want to hug the damned thing,
I suppose so I do not
forget. I mean verdigris, verdant,
viridescent.
Maybe punky? Maybe park? Like little pieces of Eden
we managed to smuggle out.
Like and unlike
the way people saved bricks
and even pieces of bricks
even pieces of pieces you
get the idea
from the Berlin wall.
Maybe good?
2.
Sometimes, when they flash
like tiny green birds
above our heavy hominoid
brains,
so freely,
so easily,
at the end of a show,
we can’t even.
Why we long to see her live
and on stage
in Charleston, in October,
during a flood.
In Fort Lauderdale spring,
just before all the maniac
collegians make the
kitschiest
golden calf ever. And
Atlantic City in lights. The lights.
Just the lights.
Because we crave that
feeling of the moment going.
The heart-twist of not
keeping it.
The heart-sink of no
such luck.
No story; no grand story,
certainly.
Just a crack in a voice
making grief absurdly
beautiful.
3.
She will of course glance
down, now and again,
at a chord she is making or
about to make
on the neck of the guitar,
like touching a foot to the earth for balance
or buoyancy before
launching again.
While actual silence itself
she works like a pro, a
very maestro of light, prolonging
one unexpectedly there, and
again further there—
in “Follow,” perhaps; “Hard
Way Home”; then “Blood Muscle Skin
and Bone”—
zeroing in on “The
Eye”—
for encore the famous
“Hallelujah,” practically blistering with irony…
Life’s a Long
Unfolding Series of Towns, Very Doomy Towns,
you
stumble, you race, you clomp through forever
and cannot reach.
And
always you find yourself missing.
In
fact you only know you’re alive
in
here because you feel something twist, some kind of torque,
a
spiraling energy in place of an I, and as lonely.
*
This
year be a groupie at nearly sixty. A kind of project
that
stumbled upon you and stuck. It’s incandescence.
You
follow the darling artist, schedules taxis and tickets, you get on a plane
and
off a plane and dance with the other sweet angel crazies
when
the artist encourages such, when she cues
you
to rock the place clear to the ground.
You
love to rock the place clear to the ground, an epically
awesome
remodeling, your face fully melty, truly you do, but lately
long
to sit very still and be quiet.
in
certain songs, please, if you listen—
into
her emptiness, her solitude.
She
may look eternally young,
but
her soul we know is ancient,
and
sad, and sore.
*
Her
tour bus is long and dark, you can't see in.
Understandable;
the more a star is pursued
the
further they must go
away.
love—
withdraw
love—
withdraw
*
She’s
doping us up on her voice real good, she's ridiculously good.
And
if we’d only shut up, if we’d only stay put,
she
may actually deliver us there, way down there at the heart
of
the song unsingable
and
we’re all of us no one together.
|